World T20 2016: England batsman Jason Roy looks forward to final as ‘just another game’ – in front of 100,000 fans
England will take on either the West Indies or India in the World Cup final at Eden Gardens
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Your support makes all the difference.After carrying England to their second ever World T20 final, Jason Roy has vowed that England will take their same buccaneering spirit into Sunday’s game in Kolkata.
Roy, who scored 78 in the semi-final against New Zealand, said: “It’s just another game of cricket. It just happens to be at Eden Gardens in the World Cup final in front of 100,000 people. It’s going to be an incredible experience but we’re going to play our natural way, the brand of cricket we’ve played for the last year or so.”
There have been few better distillations of the élan Eoin Morgan has imbued in England than that provided by Roy here. He plundered four boundaries in the opening over, and that was just the start.
“You kind of want to give yourself a chance,” he said. “But when you get off to a good start like that you kind of just want to keep going and I did. I got a bit of luck and got a few boundaries, hit a few gaps.
“Yeah it was an idea to go out there and smash every ball to be honest. Sometimes you go out there and struggle your first ten balls and don’t hit a boundary.”
Roy had no such problems. It might have helped that New Zealand, unlike in earlier matches, did not use spin until the fifth over, by which point England were already 49-0; then again, Roy’s approach would have been the same whoever bowled. “My philosophy with batting is watch the ball and hit the ball if it’s in my areas. It’s a very simple philosophy especially in T20.”
Reaching the final is quite the turnaround from midway through England’s match against South Africa, when they needed to chase down 230 to avoid being effectively eliminated two days after their tournament begun. “After the first game it was pretty far away,” Roy added. “It’s something that we’re really buzzing for.”
However they fare in Eden Gardens, England will play in the same uninhibited style that has got them this far. “We go out and do what we practice: if it works it works, it doesn’t it doesn’t,” Roy said. “We’re not a big talking side, we’re not big on ‘we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that’. We just allow all our players to go out there and do the right thing.”
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