Mumbai
\nEngland will go into their T20 World Cup semi-final against India with no fear, said all-rounder Sam Curran on Tuesday, adding that their first job would be to silence a raucous home crowd.
\nEngland will take on the favourites and hosts in front of 35,000 fiercely partisan fans in Mumbai on Thursday, with a place in the final against South Africa or New Zealand at stake.
\nThe noise will be deafening at times in the cauldron-like confines of the Wankhede Stadium.
\nBut Curran said that because he and many of his England teammates \u2014 such as Will Jacks at the Mumbai Indians \u2014 play in the Indian Premier League (IPL), they will not be fazed.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an experience as a young cricketer you dream of \u2014 playing India in the semi-final of a World Cup,\u201d left-arm seamer Curran told reporters.
\nCurran was in the international wilderness a year ago but forced his way back into the England squad with eye-catching performances in T20 franchise leagues, including the IPL.
\n\u201cIndia are a quality side but we\u2019ve played a lot of cricket here. We know how to play on these grounds and we know what to expect,t\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe IPL, no question, has helped a lot. Having played in the ground many times, there aren\u2019t many unknowns.\u201d
\nEngland experienced a hostile crowd at the Wankhede in their first match of the tournament when they beat Nepal in a final-ball thriller.
\nIt was Curran who bowled the nerveless final \u201cdeath\u201d over, conceding just five runs when Nepal needed 10, to stave off an embarrassing defeat.
\nHe then repeated the feat against Italy and has contributed with the bat from number six, scoring 149 runs so far with a best of 43 not out.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re not fearing anything and I\u2019m sure both teams are really excited by the challenge,\u201d Curran said, adding England could judge how well they were playing by the volume of the fans.
\n\u201cIf the crowd are silent, England are probably going to be doing well. That\u2019s our positive way of looking at it,\u201d said Curran.
\nIt is the third T20 World Cup in a row that England will have played India in the semi-finals and each time the winners have gone on to lift the trophy.
\nIn 2022, England crushed India by 10 wickets in Adelaide and went on to beat Pakistan in the Melbourne final.
\nTwo years ago, India won in Guyana by a similarly dominant 68 runs before downing South Africa in Barbados.
\nSouth Africa face New Zealand in the first semi-final on Wednesday. The final will take place on Sunday in Ahmedabad.
\n\u201cI guess this is what the last four or five weeks have been building for,\u201d said Curran. \u201cAnd hopefully we can take one more step towards the final.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai England will go into their T20 World Cup semi-final against India with no fear, said all-rounder Sam Curran on Tuesday, adding that their first job would be to silence a raucous home crowd. England will take on the favourites and hosts in front of 35,000 fiercely partisan fans in Mumbai on Thursday, with a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94546,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94529\/revisions\/94546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}