Brook targets England No.1 ranking after sealing series win
Captain surprised by progress but says score is fair reflection after strong run of form
Harry Brook said that his England team were "eyeing up" top spot in the ICC's T20I rankings after he led them to a series victory with an outrageous 79 not out off 35 balls in Bristol.
England's nine-wicket romp on Thursday night secured their first T20I series win over India with a game to spare and, if they win in Southampton on Saturday, they will displace the world champions as the top-ranked team in the world. Brook hopes that it will form part of a sporting double, with England playing Norway in the football World Cup quarter-finals later that evening.
"To go to world No.1 and England going to the semis, that would be pretty cool," Brook said. "We'll definitely be keeping a close eye on it the football and watching the game for sure.
"We've been told if we win the next game, we go to world No.1 and that's definitely a prize that we're eyeing up. India are a strong side. They probably haven't been as good in this series as they have been over the last couple of years, but we're really happy with the way that we've executed our plans.RelatedBen Stokes gives Harry Brook '100% support' as successor
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"To beat India 4-0 would be a pretty special series win, if I'm being honest, and to go No. 1 in the world would be even better. That's our main aim: we want to go out there and try and beat them convincingly again. We've got to go to Southampton, try and assess the conditions as well as we can - and that's something that we've done really well in this series so far."
England have won 19 out of 22 completed T20Is since Brook took over as captain last year and fell just short chasing 254 in March's World Cup semi-final against India in Mumbai. Brook said that England "probably didn't expect" to be 3-0 up with a match to play, but thought that it was a fair reflection of their progress in the shorter formats.
"The white-ball side's been on a really good path, if I'm being brutally honest," he said. "We've been playing extremely good cricket. We've been adapting to the surfaces and conditions really well. We had a good World Cup: we just fell just short of 250 in a chase at the Wankhede, which is incredible.
"I think it this series might have changed the mood around English cricket a little bit, but we've still got one more game to play. Hopefully, we can go to world No. 1 and beat a very strong Indian side."