Blaming his team for playing a conservative brand of cricket in the previous World Cup in West Indies, England skipper Andrew Strauss on Monday said that his side has learnt its lessons and would be looking to win the elusive trophy this time around.
“The whole campaign in the 2007 World Cup was a poor one. We didn’t start well, we never got going and played a very conservative brand of cricket.
“I hope we’ve learned lessons from it and won’t repeat the mistakes,” Strauss insisted.
The Strauss-led team, which landed here on Sunday, was guilty of playing some untidy one-day cricket in the last ODI series, losing 1-6 to traditional rivals Australia after a bright Ashes outing which saw the team retain the urn.
“We didn’t play good one-day cricket just recently. But we’ve got a solid squad, a very settled side and we really feel we can do really well in this tournament,” the skipper expressed.
The English team would draw inspiration from the historic Twenty20 cricket World Cup triumph in West Indies last year — the first ever ICC tournament won by the team — under the leadership of Paul Collingwood, as they look to kick-start their campaign with a warm—up match against Canada on Wednesday.
“We’re excited about it (World Cup) and I think the guys took a lot of confidence from the fact they won the World Twenty20 — they know they can do it on the big stage,” the captain said.
He, however, emphasised that English side would have to come good in the sub-continent conditions, something which the team has not been able to do in the recent past.
“We’re going to have to play well on the sub-continent, but I think we have the raw materials, a lot of talent in our squad and guys who can play expansive cricket and aggressive cricket,” Strauss said.
England’s build up to the quadrennial event has been marred with the long list of injuries, which saw middle-order batsman Eion Morgan being ruled out of the tournament, and pace duo of Tim Bresnan and Ajmal Shahzad still nursing their injuries, while Stuart Broad, who is coming back into shape, has not played since the second Ashes Test.
The captain, though, remained confident that come this World Cup his team will be able to surprise its opponents.
“We’ve got some pretty firm ideas about how we want to go about our cricket here and we hope we take some other sides by surprise by doing that,” Strauss said.
