England opener Jason Roy on Thursday (October 21) said not having Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer for the ICC T20 World Cup 2021 is a “big shame” but said they have enough depth in their squad to go all the way in the tournament.
While Stokes is on an indefinite break for his mental well-being and to recover from a finger injury, Archer ruled himself out after the recurrence of a stress fracture in his right elbow.
Recently, England suffered another setback in Sam Curran, who was ruled out of the T20 World Cup 2021 with a lower-back injury. He was replaced by his brother Tom Curran alongside Reece Topley as a traveling reserve.
Roy said during a virtual interaction: “I wouldn’t say it’s a problem — it’s a shame. It’s definitely a shame, not having those two here but you know they’re on the same path of getting fit and healthy again. You look at our depth of the squad now, the players we have, and it’s still extremely impressive.”
He continued, “The boys showed that they have done well in the warm-up game, and they’ve been training extremely hard, so I don’t think it’s a worry at all. We’ve got players that will definitely 100 percent step up, rise to the occasion. They have more than enough skills. I can tell you that from training, there’s more than enough skill that can take us all the way.”
On English batters struggle in the UAE wickets: the 31-year-old said: “I don’t think so. We’ve shown our skill on most tracks. The pitches aren’t horrendous; they’re just a bit slow, so that’s not a problem. The amount of training we’ve had, the camp we had, and then obviously a lot of the boys playing in the IPL, so there’s a lot of feedback, knowledge going around about how to combat whatever you might come across. So now I think the boys have the skill to combat whatever pitch was supplied with.”
He continued, “Coming from IPL 2021 to T20 World Cup 2021 has a lot of benefits. We have a feel of things, training and playing on these pitches, spending a lot of time interacting with players from other teams. Boys who have played in the IPL have a big advantage.”
On the other hand, Eoin Morgan and Dawid Malan’s poor form is a cause of concern for England ahead of their T20 World Cup opener against the West Indies on October 23.
Roy signed off by saying, “We have been training hard, a lot of cricketers from England haven’t played much in the last few months apart from those in the IPL. We are all shaping up well, they are getting into the swing of things. From my point of view, every single batsman in our top order has the ability to win games. I’m very excited to see that.”
(With PTI Inputs)
