This group is the era of Harry Brook: Jacks

England’s recent surge in the T20 World Cup is the beginning of the “Harry Brook-era”, built on a calm and clear mindset rather than perfection, believes all-rounder Will Jacks.

Brook endured a difficult build-up to the T20 World Cup, beginning with a disappointing Ashes and followed by a high-profile drunken altercation with a nightclub bouncer in Wellington, casting a shadow over his leadership. But he has responded with a 100 against Pakistan to seal England’s semifinal berth with a match to spare.

Against New Zealand, the already-qualified side showed no drop in intensity, recovering from 117/6 in 17 overs to chase down 160, with Jacks and Rehan Ahmed finishing the job.

England thus advanced with three wins from three in the Super Eights, their campaign peaking at the right time as they now stand just two victories away from the title after a stuttering start. On whether it felt like the “Bazball” good times were back, Jacks said, “I think this group is the era of Harry Brook. He is our white-ball captain.”

“And I think that is something that we’ve been really focusing on. He (Brook) has got us to play the certain way, and I think the environment around the group led by him is absolutely brilliant.

“Hopefully, everyone can see that we’re having fun and we’re approaching the game in the right way. And I think that’s why we’ve had some success,” added Jacks, who returned with a record-equalling fourth player-of-the-match show in their win of the Kiwis.

For Jacks, England’s strength lies not in perfection but in composure.

“We’ve won six out of seven games and we’ve qualified for a semi-final. At the end of the day, no one really cares. “We obviously want to play well in there, but we’re not gutted that we haven’t played the perfect game because we’re winning.”

“And that’s T20 cricket, that’s professional sport. It’s also incredibly hard to do that. You’re playing against a very strong side who are prepared as well as you guys and they know what they’re trying to do and they’re also trying to play the perfect game. “So, the chances of that happening are very slim and I think what we’ve done well is in the key moments we’ve kept a calm and clear head and we’ve managed to negotiate those well,” he added. Reflecting on the tense final overs, Jacks said: “I was nervous... We’ve seen how the Sri Lanka game two nights ago. So, we needed to do something special.

“I think that ball that Rehan (Ahmed) hit, a six-second ball, that gave me energy as well. And I thought, right, we’ve got a chance here.”

Jacks an all-time finisher now: Santner

Hailing Jacks as an “all-time finisher”, NZ skipper Mitchell Santner said, “Will Jacks has shown he’s an all-time finisher now. I know he hasn’t done it for a long time, but he’s pretty good at it.” “When that stage of the game, you kind of know they’re going to come hard. They need 40 off three but the options they took was class. “I guess me and Rachin bowled the short boundary leg side was going to be a tougher option to close out for maybe another spinner or a seamer,” he said.

New Zealand were comfortably placed at 123/3 in 14 overs but failed to accelerate, finishing on 159 for seven.

Santner conceded there were issues with the batting effort.

“Yeah, I guess today we, I think in the game against Sri Lanka we lost wickets in clumps through the middle and we obviously had a good death, the last kind of four overs. And then today, it was the opposite,” he said. “We put ourselves in a good platform. And I guess credit to the England spinners at the end there, made it tough, made us take tougher options than probably what the English batters did for us at the end. So yeah, it’s a close one. “You could obviously say we should have defended those last three overs or with the bat, we could have potentially got a couple more as well. But there’s a lot of things that go into an innings with both bat and ball.”