Gooch insists England can go one better than class of ‘92
FORMER England captain Graham Gooch believes Andrew Strauss’ side have the fighting spirit to go on and lift the World Cup.
England have reached the final three times in 1979, 1987 and in 1992 when Gooch was skipper – but lost every time.
And Gooch, who is part of the management team as a batting coach, says England have shown the character in the first half of the tournament to grind out wins when needed.
If England are to go on and win the tournament then they will have to win three more matches – starting with Saturday’s quarter-final against co-hosts Sri Lanka in Colombo.
“Winning a World Cup didn’t happen for me,” Gooch said.
“I hope this team have got it within them to win the World Cup – and I’m convinced they have.
“They’ve come through this first stage of the competition, shown their fighting qualities and their resilience.
“The objective was to get into the knockout stages.
“We’ve made that, we’ve scraped through. We’re not going to look back, we’re going to look forward to the next challenge
“We know we can improve, we know we’ve got better cricket within our team. Our guys need to concentrate on that.
“Each individual has got to commit to his game to be part of our team framework for the big match.
“We can get better, and if we do we have as good a chance as anyone else.”