England captain Harry Brook has challenged the Three Lions to keep fighting to keep their No. 1 rank in T20Is, after they reclaimed it on Saturday, September 19, by winning the third and final game of the series against Sri Lanka.
England won the final game at Old Trafford by 8 wickets, and this resulted in them leapfrogging India to go to the top of the ICC rankings. This had been achieved at the top spot before, after winning a match against India with a scoreline of 4-0 earlier in the year, only to be beaten weeks later by Zimbabwe and take back their title.
"I think we should be extremely proud to win another series, another whitewash series, and go back to world number one. It is an extremely good effort. Everybody in that changing room should be really proud of themselves,” Brook said after the third T20I, as quoted by Cricinfo.
"It feels like that, yeah. I think everything's running so smoothly, especially in the field. Lads are taking it upon themselves to make sure they're in the right spots, and we're really nailing down and buying into everything that we're talking about in the outfield. Especially since we're putting 100% in, which is all that we can ever ask for,” he added.
Harry Brook had an excellent time in the series, with scores of 114*, 23, and 33 to his name in three games.
For him to solidify his position as captain as well as keep up the good form exhibited in his T20I games, Brook stressed that it is critical to remain ruthless and make use of his team's number one ranking as an achievement.
"That's why we went with our strongest side today. With the opportunity of whitewashing aside, you never want to take that for granted. We obviously knew that we had the opportunity to go number one before the series if we had beaten them 3-0. So that was always in the back of our minds.
We've got to stay motivated to try and keep that spot for as long as possible. We probably don't play as much T20 as other nations, especially India, who play a hell of a lot of T20s. So keeping that might not be as easy as it sounds, but every opportunity we get, we're going to try and dominate in opposition,” Brook stated.
