T20 World Cup: Will Jacks delivers to Harry Brook and England once again

Jack’s ashes were not fancy propositions under the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Off the field, he was one of the England players splashed on the front page of Australian newspapers with a pint in his hand, Noosa.

However, he struggled with two wickets in the third Test against Australia in Adelaide at a cost of 212 runs. Across the series he took six wickets for 394 runs.

Jack’s tenacious batting in Australia showed a side of his game that hinted at promise and he is now thriving as England’s all-season T20 man.

With Brook’s support on Sunday, he was asked to open the bowling for England for the first time since the match against Australia in Barbados in the last T20 World Cup.

On that day, after what Jos Buttler later described as a “gut feeling”, Travis Head, the man who cut him down and dragged him into submission in Adelaide, sent him onto the roof of the Kensington Oval in a drive that cost more than 22 runs. England’s campaign never recovered.

This time his opening cost just four goals, and even that was a courtesy boundary.

Brook said giving Jack the new ball was a “last minute” decision, the logic being that with a shorter boundary to Kamil Mishara’s left leg side, it was better for Jack to bowl the ball away.

Typically, after that good first over, Jack dismissed two right-handers in his next over – the dangerous Kusal Mendis poking and cutting the ball, and Pavan Rathnayake charging the ball and cutting it high to the offside loop.

“Ratnayake was a very good player for them, probably their best player – the way he ran on the field,” Brook said.

“Getting him out off the first ball was a very important part of the game for us.”

Control was something that was often lacking with Jack’s rotation over the winter but here he cast his most precise spell.

Bowling four times on the tour, he bowled 91% of his deliveries onto the stumps or into the channel – the highest in any England match in his career.

His only bad ball, the one that slipped from his sweaty hand, was pulled for six by Dasun Shanaka but later Jax got his revenge by being the first catcher in a brilliant relay catch with Tom Banton.