England take just 3.1 overs to thrash Oman and stay alive in T20 World Cup

England could scarcely have wished for a better outcome from part one of the push to keep their T20 World Cup defence alive, not simply beating Oman but crucially massaging their net run-rate like it was a prized Wagyu cow.

It took an hour and 42 minutes for Jos Buttler’s men to complete the task at hand, a hard, bouncy pitch – and victory at the toss – setting the stage for a full-blown annihilation of their opposition. First skittling Oman for 47 all out in the 13.2 overs, the batters then opened up the possibility of sundowners on one of Antigua’s 365 beaches by knocking off the target, two down, in the space of 19 balls.

More important than those refreshments, one assumes, was the effect this quick kill had on the net run-rate column. England had begun their penultimate Group B match on minus 1.8, with Scotland, the only side they can keep them out of the top two, on 2.16. As Jonny Bairstow slashed Fayyaz Butt square to seal the win, England had leapfrogged this figure to reach a far healthier 3.01.

There are still a few hurdles for Buttler and Co to jump, not least repeating the dose against Namibia on Saturday. And a shock victory for Scotland over Australia in St Lucia later that day will make all this number-crunching irrelevant. Nevertheless, a campaign that slightly stumbled out of the blocks is at least up and running.

This was a bit of an ordeal for Oman, all told. Already out of the running for the Super Eight phase themselves, the associates faced an England attack augmented by a recall for Reece Topley – Chris Jordan the player to miss out – and in no mood to muck about. Bar the odd sliced boundary and a sloppy dropped catch at slip early on by Moeen Ali, it was one-way traffic on what looked like a road of a surface.

Topley went wicketless in his three overs but his swing from the breeze – allied with the odd delivery that held its line – made him a handful. Instead, it was the dual pace of Jofra Archer and Mark Wood that blew Oman away initially, the pair going on to return identical figures of three for 12 with some fast-twitch blood and thunder.

Perhaps most heartening for Buttler, even factoring in the standard of opposition, was the player of the match performance from Adil Rashid. Slightly wayward during last week’s 36-run defeat to Australia in Bridgetown, the leg-spinner utterly purred throughout his four overs, four for 11. The ball was on a string as he made use of the cross-breeze on offer and deployed that trademark googly to devastating effect.

The run chase? Well, that was utterly vaporised. England needed to get there in 32 balls or fewer to overtake Scotland’s net run-rate and this looked eminently possible when Phil Salt crashed Bilal Khan’s first two deliveries over the rope. Bowled by the third via an inside edge, Salt walked off with a mildly absurd 12 off three balls.

Will Jacks similarly perished attempting to target the grass banks but these two wickets were little more than dot balls, Buttler breaking the back of the chase when he smoked Bilal’s second over for 22 runs and Bairstow applied the coup de grace.