England bowls first against United States in crunch Super Eight game at T20 World Cup

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) — Struggling England chose to bowl first against the United States cricket team on Sunday, knowing it needs a convincing win to advance from the Super Eight playoffs at the Twenty20 World Cup.

England has two points in Group 2, two more than the last-place Americans who have been the surprise team of the tournament by making it this far.

Fast bowler Chris Jordan replaced Mark Wood in the only change England made from its narrow defeat to group leader South Africa.

England doesn’t have happy World Cup memories in Bridgetown where its group game against Scotland was abandoned and it also lost to Australia by 36 runs before it managed to squeeze into the Super Eight.

Captain Jos Buttler won the toss and said he was encouraged to bowl first by the “early morning start” against the Americans.

The United States, which made history by beating heavyweight Pakistan earlier in the tournament, kept an unchanged side from its defeat to second-place West Indies.

American skipper Aaron Jones also wanted to bowl first. His team needed to be more disciplined, he said, after losing both Super Eight games against South Africa and the West Indies.

“It’ll be a good wicket and we’re going to go hard for sure,” Jones said. “Let’s see how we come up."

___

Lineups:

United States: Steven Taylor, Andries Gous, Nitish Kumar, Aaron Jones (captain), Corey Anderson, Milind Kumar, Harmeet Singh, Nosthush Kenjinge, Shadley van Schalkwyk, Ali Khan, Saurabh Netravalkar.

England: Phil Salt, Jos Buttler (captain), Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali, Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran, Chris Jordan, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Reece Topley.

___

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket