It would be pretty cool – Harry Brook hoping for double England triumph

10 Jul 2026 • 10:00 PM MYT
The Independent
The Independent

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It would be pretty cool – Harry Brook hoping for double England triumph

Harry Brook hopes to celebrate a glorious England cricket and football double this weekend.

England will move to the top of the T20 world rankings by completing a 4-0 series victory over India in Southampton.

And with an earlier start of 2.30pm on Saturday, there will be plenty of time for skipper Brook and company to settle down and watch Thomas Tuchel’s side take on Norway in their World Cup quarter-final later that day.

England play Norway in the World Cup quarter-finals on Saturday night (Nick Potts/PA) (PA Wire)

“To go world number one and England go into the semis would be pretty cool,” said Brook.

“We’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on it and watching the game for sure.”

World T20 champions India edged out England by seven runs in their fiercely-fought Mumbai semi-final in March.

But this series has been a procession since bad weather ruined the first game in Durham, England’s impressive margins of victory being four wickets, 125 runs and nine wickets.

“We want to go out there and beat them convincingly again,” said Brook, whose destructive unbeaten 79 from 35 balls helped England coast home with 37 balls to spare in Bristol on Thursday.

“But we’ve got to go to Southampton and try and assess the conditions as best we can.

“That’s something we’ve done really well in this series so far and executed our plans.

“The one thing we’ve wanted to do in the last couple of years is adapt to conditions.

“Play what’s in front of us and that’s what we’ve done really well over the last six to eight months as a T20 side and as an ODI side in Sri Lanka. Keep on doing that and good things will happen.

India’s T20 performances have been criticised by coach Ryan ten Doeschate (David Davies/PA) (PA Wire)

“T20 is never going to be easy and it’s a fickle game, but we’re playing some exceptional cricket.”

With World Cup winners Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav among those missing from this series, India have looked nowhere near the side that won the tournament just four months ago.

India were beaten 2-0 by Ireland last month and it is the first time since February 2019 they have lost two consecutive bilateral T20 series.

Assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate produced a withering assessment after their Bristol beating, saying: “I don’t want to stand and defend the players and also be overcritical.

“But the onus is on the players to have the mindset that it is going really badly and look at the evidence in front of them.”

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