NEWS
Follow UsOver the last two World Cups, across formats, England’s Reece Topley has been on the wrong side of things. Just a day before England’s warm-up clash against Pakistan, Topley was training dual catches when he hurt his ankle ligaments after tripping over the boundary toblerone.
Eventually, that was enough to rule the left-arm pacer out of the tournament. That wasn’t it. In the 2023 ODI World Cup, Topley was also ruled out of the tournament after fracturing his left index finger during a 229-run defeat at the hands of South Africa.
However, thus far in the T20 World Cup 2024, the left-arm pacer has remained free of injury and has gone from warming the bench to becoming an essential wheel in the cog of England’s title defence.
“Yeah, obviously injuries are not by design or anything like that, they kind of happen. I'm quite comfortable that in the past it was nothing down to me, I sort of crossed every box, crossed every T, dotted every I and all that. I left no stone unturned and things just happened, it's part of the game,” Topley recalled on the eve of their clash against West Indies.
“I've just kept going with that and luckily, I'm here still in one piece and it's the Super 8’s. I think it's a really exciting week hopefully like I just said there's going to be a time later in life that you look back at this week of being a really poignant and successful week that helped us achieve winning a World Cup out here.”
One of the reasons why Topley wasn’t preferred over the likes of Chris Jordan, Mark Wood and Jofra Archer was the fact that England needed someone at the death. While England have picked Topley over the last two games, it has come at the cost of Wood sitting on the bench.
While there is still confusion over which trio would feature for England’s Super 8 opener against West Indies, Topley has put the hat in the ring, reiterating his death-over credentials. Topley has bowled 30 overs at the death in his T20I career, where he has picked up 15 wickets, averaging 19.5, with a strike rate of 12.
“It's nothing new, I've done it in an England shirt before, I actually really enjoy it because it's kind of like the time where you get your rewards for bowling well up top and keeping it tight, it's the time where the wickets can fall, so it's quite exciting in that respect and I don't think there's anything to be feared,” he said.
“If you bowl well at the death, you get rewards, if you don't bowl well, you get hit. I don't think it differs to any sort of stage in the game to be honest. It's just the calibre of player you bowl at and you don't have any help in the air or as much off the scene. Yeah, it's just delivering a skill down the other end, so it doesn't really change too much.”
One other factor that teams have started picking up over the last few days has been the ‘breeze factor’ in the Caribbean. While the clashes in the United States of America didn’t really get affected by the breeze, the matches here in the Caribbean could be dictated by which team battles the breeze better. Topley insisted that the ‘breeze’ would only help swing bowlers, with the ball swinging a bit longer than normal.
“Yeah, breeze is obviously welcomed as a swing bowler. It definitely makes the ball swing for a little bit longer, maybe a little bit more. But then equally there's a side that's hard to shut down. The ball certainly flies when you go that way. So, I think the batsmen are going to equally try to exploit it as much as the bowlers. So, it's going to be a good contest, almost like a game of chess out there,” he added.
England’s first Super 8 fixture will be at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Saint Lucia, where, funnily enough, they will take on a Sammy-coached West Indies side. The crowds have really rallied behind the Windies brigade this time, and Topley feels that it will be exciting to play in front of an opposition crowd.
“Yeah, I think that's something we've already brought up is we've not played in front of an opposition crowd for a long time now. Even when we came here in November, it was very well supported with English fans. Yeah, hopefully we can put on a good show regardless of the outcome. It's going to be amazing, I'm sure it's going to be a night that hopefully we all look back on in our career that was quite a poignant night in this World Cup and helping us to achieve our goal,” he concluded.
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