The bars are stocked, the bunting is up, each last little part of the Oval and every other ground has been swathed in ICC branding, and the names of all existing, conflicting sponsors covered over with black tape. Everything is ready. And so are England.
“We have been for the last week,” Eoin Morgan said, “and, if we didn’t play these last warm-up games, we’d still be in a position where we felt confident enough to win going into that first game against South Africa.” They won their final practice match, against Afghanistan, by nine wickets and, better yet, they also had confirmation that Morgan and Mark Wood will be fit to play the opening match on Thursday.
It was, Morgan said, “the best possible news”. He was pretty worried when he injured his finger in training last Friday. “It looked worse than it was. I’m lucky it was a dislocation and not a break,” but the doctor popped the joint back in. He was able to play on Monday, although he did not actually get to bat. Nor did Wood bowl but he was able to train. “I jarred my foot when I bowled a slower ball,” he explained, “I thought I might have tweaked my soleus muscle in my calf but the scans couldn’t have been any better.”
As warm-ups go, this last one was a gentle bend-over to touch the toes. After that fraught weekend, when they lost two players to injuries and a match to Australia, it was just what they needed. The only problem was, Morgan said, that his fast bowlers did not get enough of a work-out. Jofra Archer still managed to do plenty in the time he had. Afghanistan were two down by the end of his opening spell, which he seemed to enjoy a lot more than the Afghan batsmen did. They spent most of it ducking underneath bouncers and backing away to leg to try to find space to play in.
Archer had both Hazratullah Zazai and Rahmat Shah caught at mid-on, and then he hit Hashmatullah Shahidi flush in the box. When Ben Stokes came on first change, Noor Ali Zadran played on and Afghanistan were 49 for three. It got worse. They lost four wickets for four runs in eight balls. Some of this damage was self-inflicted. Hashmatullah was run out by Liam Plunkett trying to sneak an unnecessary second run, then Najibullah Zadran made a similar mistake taking on Jonny Bairstow’s throw. In between, Gulbadin Naib flapped a catch to long-on, and then Rashid Khan sliced his first ball to slip.
Afghanistan were 92 for eight then, so did well to make it all the way to 160. That was down to Mohammad Nabi, who batted as if he was angry at how wrong it had all gone and blazed three brilliant sixes, the best of them a preposterous flat drive over extra cover off Adil Rashid. He had a little help from the No 11, Dawlat Zadran, but in the end Morgan whistled up Archer again and he soon finished things off. Nabi top-edged a catch to third man, where Bairstow took the ball once, threw it up, then stepped back over the boundary and back into play to catch it again.
Afghanistan were all out in 38.4 overs and England needed just over half that number to make the runs. They lost only one wicket along the way. Bairstow was stumped by Rahmat Shah off Nabi’s off-spin. Not that Shah could claim much credit for it. The ball bounced out of his gloves as if it had hit a brick wall and ricocheted into the stumps just as Bairstow’s toes were in the air. The dismissal did not slow England too much. Jason Roy, who made 89 off 46 balls, batted like a man with a tee-time to make. Maybe he was. Morgan said a lot of the squad were going to spend Tuesday playing golf.
England seem honed to a sharp point, they look ready, and sound relaxed. Morgan said he expected they would all feel a little more nervous when the tournament finally starts on Thursday, but they are prepared for that too. “I’ve always said the first game of a World Cup feels different from any other game, so naturally you do think more about it and how it will look on the day,” he said. “Everybody’s going to feel that anticipation, and that excitement of playing the first game. It will be different than any other day. It will be great. I will be encouraging guys to embrace it.”
