England flirted with one of the great T20 World Cup upsets in Mumbai before getting their campaign under way with victory against Nepal by four runs and, although they did not lose the game, Sam Curran insisted they had lost any sense of complacency.

“We take those two points and take great confidence, because it wouldn’t have been a nice dressing room this evening,” said Curran, who conceded just five runs in the final over to decide the game.

“I’ve played a lot of T20 cricket. When you win the close ones they’re actually the ones that give you a little boost and a bit of a smile on your face … The associate nations are getting so much better. Some of the shots in the last few overs … it’s serious stuff. You can’t underestimate these guys any more.”

Will Jacks said of Curran: “He’s won us that game. It was ebbs and flows the whole way. I thought it was almost lost with six balls to go. Winning ugly is a great trait. It’s incredibly difficult to replicate that experience and a game like today, where we potentially weren’t expecting it to go down to the last ball and it has. When we get in that situation in the rest of the tournament, which we definitely will at some stage, we’ll be able to look back on this experience and take that with us.”

England next play West Indies on Wednesday but in the moments before he delivered the crucial over Curran already had their second opponents on his mind, specifically Carlos Brathwaite’s four successive sixes off Ben Stokes to settle the 2016 World Cup final in their favour.

“I weirdly thought of the 2016 final when Carlos got hold of Stokesy,” Curran said. “I was thinking: ‘Well, if I execute he’s not going to hit me for six.’ I just watched his feet and thankfully executed. Those games are great to win, but wow it would have been a horrible one to lose.”