With world-class players throughout the squad and an unshakeable belief that no score is beyond their reach, Adil Rashid admits it is a special time to be an England player.
England will begin their quest to win their first-ever ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup against South Africa at The Oval on Thursday with a weight of home expectation.
The hosts have risen to the summit of the world rankings since completely revamping their approach to one-day cricket after a disappointing 2015 edition of the tournament.
And despite the pressure being on Eoin Morgan’s side to live up to their headline billing, Rashid insists the players possess unwavering confidence in their ability to get the job done.
“It’s a nice place to be now in this England team, especially with all the players we’ve got around us, and in the past four years we’ve had a lot of success winning series,” he said.
“We jumped up to number one in the world as well, so the last four years have been a good journey and hopefully we can push that bit extra and play on for the next six or seven weeks.
“It’s an exciting feeling being in this team as you have world-class players all around you and the opposition might get 370, but there’s a belief in the dressing room we can chase it down.
“There is no hesitation or someone going, ‘I don’t know about this’, we all have that belief and confidence we can do it. If the openers don’t, number three, four, five six will instead.
“It’s the same all the way down the order, we have that belief that a few years ago we may not have had. Now we’ve got that regardless or the score, 400 or whatever.
“We have got that belief that we can chase it down and that’s a good place to be knowing that you have world class players all around you who can do that.”
