We underestimated few sides in our group: Brook

England captain Harry Brook on Saturday admitted underestimating some teams in their group and promised to dish out stronger performances in the Super 8 stage in the T20 World Cup. England, the two-time champions of the tournament, have been far from convincing thus far with three nervy victories against associate nations and a loss at the hands of former champions West Indies.

They nearly lost to lowly Nepal before scraping to a four-run win and suffered a comprehensive 30-run defeat to former champions West Indies before beating Scotland and Italy to reach the Super 8s. They face co-hosts Sri Lanka in their first Super 8s match here on Sunday.

“It was obviously a niggly start to the competition. We probably underestimated a few of the sides, and they put up a really good fight, and yeah, look, we came here to get through that stage, and thankfully we have, so we’re here in the Super 8s, and that’s our main focus now,” Brook said during the pre-match press conference.

“We see it as a new competition now. Obviously with the no carrying over of points or anything like that, it’s a completely fresh start, and we can see it like that as well. “Just a few people haven’t fired yet, but hopefully with the competition we’re about to come up against, those boys can start to fire and have some good match-winning performances.”

England registered a 3-0 T20 series whitewash of Sri Lanka at the same venue earlier this month as a tune-up to the T20 World Cup. “We obviously had a very good series against them here and on this particular ground as well, so we can take a lot of confidence from having played here and having experience on this surface and this ground.

“We’re really looking forward to taking them on. And yeah, hopefully we can play our best cricket and really put them under pressure.” Brook also conceded that his side had been “slightly too careful with the bat” in the group games and indicated that they would look to be more aggressive going forward.

“We’ve been slightly too careful with the bat. We can probably be a bit more brave in certain situations and have more faith in the guys behind us to be able to go out there and put a decent score on as well. Talking about the Sri Lankan team, he said, “I’ve learned that you can’t take any team for granted, as we’ve seen in the group stages. We’ve managed to sneak through in a couple of games.

“Some of their batters are batting really well. So hopefully we can get a few wickets in the power play. And Nissanka is on a bit of a heat at the minute. So it would be ideal if we can get him out early. “We just want to go out there and play our best cricket. We can really look to put them under a little bit more pressure, especially with the batting depth that we got.

“They’re obviously a strong side with a lot of confidence as well after a few very good wins and if we stick to our guns and play our best cricket there’s no reason why we can’t beat them.” Asked if batting all-rounder Jacob Bethel is fit to bowl, Brook said, “Not sure yet... He’s got a decent cut in his finger. So he’d have to have strapping on his finger but if there’s some way we can get around that then we’d like to bowl him but at the minute I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Hopefully he can somehow get over that and roll a few out.” Asked about rain forecast on Saturday, Brook said, “You can sometimes go down a bit of a rabbit hole thinking that you’re going to play a five over game and then it ends up being a T20 and you kind of play it slightly differently. “So we’ve just got to prepare as if it is a T20 game and hope that the rain stays away. And then if it doesn’t, then we’ve got to adapt and realise you’ve got to play the game slightly differently.”