England must register NRR-boosting victories in their remaining two matches to go level on points with the Scots, who have a significantly superior net run-rate.
This is the first match between England and Oman across any format.
Oman come into this this match winless, having failed to secure a victory in their previous three encounters. Despite their lackluster performance, the team remains driven by their sense of personal pride and the chance to upset the reigning champions.
“We’ve still got things in our control and that’s all you can ask for. We’ve got two more games. We’re treating this game with Oman in isolation. They’ve got our full attention. We’re going to prepare really well for that. And then see what happens in this game. If we get into a position where we’re in a dominant position and can push hard, we will. If we have to scrap and fight and get the two points, we will as well. So, we’ll just keep an open mind, as we always will. But essentially, we want to play that brand of cricket. I think we had glimpses of it the other day. I thought we started well with the bat, but to get a full performance in is really important. Get that on-field confidence. I think we’re really close, but obviously it’s been a bit of a disjointed tournament so far,” said England Coach Matthew Mott
England are set to play their first T20I match at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, even though they have previously competed at this ground on 13 occasions, including two recent appearances during their white-ball tour of the Caribbean in December.
“Yeah, we will try to. We will try here, as I said before, that we are trying to prove the point, but it’s not a fluke that we just came in the World Cup from an Asian country…. We are trying to get [give] some [a] good fight and surprise them because this is what happened to the bigger teams, I might think that they are not going to take [it] easy but for us we will try to give them a good fight because we have nothing to lose. All we have here is to gain some good confidence and maybe a win to end the positive side from this World Cup,” said Oman all-rounder Ayaan Khan
Oman Squad: Pratik Athavale(w), Naseem Khushi, Aqib Ilyas(c), Zeeshan Maqsood, Khalid Kail, Ayaan Khan, Mehran Khan, Rafiullah, Shakeel Ahmed, Kaleemullah, Bilal Khan, Kashyap Prajapati, Mohammad Nadeem, Shoaib Khan, Fayyaz Butt
England Squad: Philip Salt, Jos Buttler(w/c), Will Jacks, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Chris Jordan, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood, Reece Topley, Ben Duckett, Sam Curran, Tom Hartley
