England v Oman: T20 Cricket World Cup – live

Key events

Even the pitch looks better. Bridgetown, for both England’s games, was like a stale biscuit.

Reece Topley has the ball. England look better already.

“The weather,” says Nasser Hussain, “is set fair. There was a shower earlier but now it’s blue skies and a breeze.” Does the curse of the commentator apply when someone from Sky is talking about the sky?

Out come the teams, both in red – their top halves anyway. Oman’s trousers are red too, while England’s are blue. One of these decades, cricket will hear about the concept of the second strip. Even the flags, lavishly displayed on the outfield, are quite alike. The Omani national anthem, to my untrained ear, is magnificent but on the long side.

The lie of the land

Teams that have won all their games in this World Cup: India, Australia, West Indies and South Africa.

Teams that have won none: Ireland, England, Oman, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

One brings two. “Good evening Tim,” says Krish Krishnamoorthy. “Stepping up to cover the OBO of England vs Oman must be the equivalent to getting a free ticket to watch Waiting for Godot. Who knows, you may be covering history today. Whisper softly…”

Ha. At my school, when we were about 15, we had to read Waiting for Godot round the room. It almost put me off Beckett for life.

The first email comes in from ~~Oman~~ Scandinavia. “Hei Tim,” says Brendan Large. “I’m tuning in from Norway and am now having a slight panic attack. Is there a chance of rain for the game today? If England get knocked out because of 2 washouts it would be very harsh, but also… I want to watch some cricket. So it would be a very very dull result.” It would! The last forecast I saw threatened a few showers, but it seemed to be saying that we would get a game of sorts.

Teams in full: Oman

Oman 1 Kashyap Prajapati, 2 Pratik Athavale (wk), 3 Aqib Ilyas (capt), 4 Zeeshan Maqsood, 5 Khalid Kail, 6 Ayaan Khan, 7 Shoaib Khan, 8 Mehran Khan, 9 Fayyaz Butt, 10 Kaleemullah, 11 Bilal Khan.

Teams in full: England

England 1 Phil Salt, 2 Jos Buttler (capt, wk), 3 Will Jacks, 4 Jonny Bairstow, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Moeen Ali, 7 Liam Livingstone, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Mark Wood, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Reece Topley.

Teams in brief: Topley comes in

As widely predicted, Reece Topley gets his first go of the tournament, replacing Chris Jordan. With his swing and height and left-arm angle, he could have made all the difference against Australia.

Toss: England win and bowl

“Looks a really good wicket,” says Jos Buttler. “But we’d like to know what we’re chasing.” How much will the net run rate prey on his team’s minds, Mike Atherton wonders. “Yeah, a little bit.”

Aqib Ilyas says he would have bowled first too.

Weather latest

It’s not raining yet.

Preamble

Evening everyone and welcome to a giant banana skin. A game that should have been a breeze for England is now fraught with danger. It’s not just must-win, it’s must-win-big. After their first two matches of this World Cup, England have no wins, one point, and two old foes sniggering as they see them squirm – Scotland and Australia. Now they meet a new foe in Oman, who will be facing England for the first time ever in international cricket.

England have never successfully defended a World Cup in cricket, football or rugby (not even the women have managed it). So far they haven’t looked remotely like changing that dismal record. Their bowlers were flayed by the Scottish openers, then marmalised by the Aussie ones. Against Scotland, England neither took a wicket nor scored a run. Against Australia, they did both without coming close to winning.

There’s no shame, of course, in losing to the world’s best tournament team. And it was cruel that England’s hopes of bashing 109 in ten overs against Scotland were washed away by the Bridgetown rain. But the upshot is that they are in grave danger of heading for the same embarrassment as when they went to India, eight months ago, as the 50-over world champions.

That said, they’re English – they’re used to being embarrassed. And they now face what are on paper their two easiest assignments, against Oman and Namibia. Oman have even fewer points than England (none), but only because they lost to Namibia in a Super Over.

Both games are at the Viv Richards Stadium in Antigua and, weather permitting, England should win them by a street. The question is: will it be a wide enough street to lead to the Super Eights?

Play is due to start at 3pm local time, 8pm BST. So I hope to see you soon around 7.35pm BST with news of the toss and teams.