Brendon McCullum played a direct role in England’s latest T20 World Cup triumph by passing specific instructions to Rehan Ahmed just before his pivotal cameo in the late innings. McCullum’s message – delivered by radio from the England balcony – told the young spinner to channel his inner Virender Sehwag.
Rehan Ahmed helped England pull off a remarkable heist to reach the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup with a bang. The 21-year-old made his first World Cup appearance with a first-ball wicket and finished with two for 28 after replacing Jamie Overton in the last Super 8 match.
England needed 43 off the last 19 balls when Rehan arrived at the crease but he and Will Jacks put on an unbroken stand of 44 runs off just 16 balls. Their efforts against a spinning Colombo wicket, where scoring proved difficult, saw England finish top of their group with three wins from three matches.
Rehan finished unbeaten on 19 off seven balls, serving under immense pressure and under instructions from England head coach McCullum.
“Baz actually sent down one of the radios and said, ‘tell Reha to bat like Sehwag’,” Rehan said. “Yesterday in practice on a similar goal, I tried to play that way. I tried to hit sixes straight because the role I will have in the team will be similar to the one I trained for.
The highlight was the all-round performance of Will Jacksas he claimed his fourth man of the match in the tournament, equaling Shane Watson’s record set in 2012. Part-time off-spinner Jacks removed key New Zealand batsmen before his decisive batting display at number seven.
“Ideally I would do nothing because I’m an extra bowler and an extra batsman,” Jacks said. “If I hadn’t bowled and not batted, (it would mean) we would have had that perfect game that we keep talking about. At the end of the day nobody cares, obviously we want to play well but we’re not gutted that we didn’t play a perfect game. That’s T20 cricket. What we’ve done well is in the key moments we’ve managed to keep calm and we’ve won. All three games in the Super 8s now everyone in this team is at a high level.”
England will now travel to Mumbai to face either India or the West Indies in the semi-finals.
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Published on:
28 Feb 2026 19:00 IST
