England narrowly avoid ignominious T20 World Cup defeat to Nepal

Hello and welcome to live, over-by-over coverage of England v Nepal in Mumbai. It’s the start of England’s World Cup campaign, one they will approach with confidence after a fine recent run in T20 internationals. They’ve won 11 of the last 12 completed games, including a clean sweep in Sri Lanka, and are generally rated either third or fourth favourites to win the competition.

Harry Brook will be pleased just to start the tournament and talk about cricket rather than his infamous night out in New Zealand. “It has been pretty horrendous to be honest,” Brook said. “It has just been tough. It’s not been a very nice time of my life. It’s just not been easy. All I do is hit a ball with a bat and that’s what I want to carry on doing for the rest of my career.

“I’d rather it had not happened, but it’s happened now and we’ve got to move forward and hopefully things can blow over and hopefully things are brighter on the other side.”

England should cruise through from Group C, which also includes West Indies, Nepal, Italy and Scotland. The top two go through to the Super Eights, where the tournament starts to heat up. And they should win today against Nepal, a fast-improving side with an enormous fanbase, but that’s all part of the awkwardness – in the 19-year-history of the T20 World Cup, England have lost twice to the Netherlands and once to Ireland.

They named their side yesterday, with Tom Banton and Luke Wood preferred to Ben Duckett and Jamie Overton. Both are making their World Cup debuts. The match starts at 9.30am, and we’ll have details of the toss shortly.