Taha Hashim revisits the story of England’s successful 2010 World T20 campaign, through contributions from members of the winning XI.

Craig Kieswetter, South Africa-born, qualified to play for England on a Tuesday. On the Wednesday he hit 81 from 66 balls against his new team. On the weekend he was named for a tour of Bangladesh, when he would make an ODI hundred. Craig David, eat your heart out.

That Wednesday produced one of English cricket’s lightning-bolt moments. Kieswetter’s assault for England Lions, taking place in a T20 match in Abu Dhabi, was not disruptive but rather a lesson for the seniors. Alongside the 22-year-old at the top of the order was a 30-year-old Michael Lumb,experienced at county level but,like Kieswetter, uncapped.He too would hit an attacking match-winning fifty that day in a chase of 158, returning to the crease to finish unbeaten on 58 after a blow to the chin from Stuart Broad had forced him to temporarily retire hurt.

“It could have been a different story,” Lumb says. “I remember Craig getting dropped early on by Broady [Broad] at mid-off or mid-on, and I wasn’t due to open in that game. Craig was doing quite well and probably the flavour of the month at the time so I didn’t give much thought of England selection.”

Kieswetter and Lumb had shown the opposition what they so desperately lacked less than three months outfrom the start of the 2010 World T20. The openers for the senior side that day were Jonathan Trott – steady but slow – and Joe Denly, in his first incarnation as an England international. Management were soon to realise that a more brazen approach would be required for some enjoyment under the Caribbean sun.

In the T20I series against Pakistan that followed England’s defeat to the Lions, the writing was on the wall. “Andy [Flower, England’s head coach] made me apologise to the team again after a T20 match against Pakistan in Dubai in February 2010,” Trott later wrote in Unguarded, his autobiography. “I had messed up, it’s true, in making 39 from 51 balls when opening the batting.

“It was pretty obvious in Dubai that Andy wanted to find a way to get Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb into the side. He asked me to move out of the way in the dressing rooms once as he was trying to watch Lumb play in the Indian Premier League on TV.”

Trott’s premonitions weren’t misguided. It was in Delhi while with Rajasthan Royals that Lumb received the call that he was off to the World T20. Kieswetter was going to join him there.

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England arrived in the Caribbean displaying the hallmarks of the Flower era. The Test side had regained the Ashes at home the previous summer and were now just months away from a trip Down Under that would bring to an end 24 years of pain. These were the happy days, before the turmoil that was to come.

Taking the lead alongside Flower was captain Paul Collingwood, a calm presence who preached enjoyment to his players, taking away the stresses that come so naturally with a high-profile tournament.

“I had times under Andy where it was more intense, but I think Colly [Collingwood] was keen to keep T20 with an emphasis on fun,” recalls Luke Wright, who had been part of England’s two previous World T20 squads. “He sensed that previously we’d piled on pressure, whereas he wanted us to go out and enjoy it, and that was what it felt like. Of all the times I played for England that was the most enjoyment I had on and off the pitch as part of a group.”

Newcomer Lumb could sense it too. “I always thought it was quite a special group of players. I was new on the scene, but I thought it was a fantastic group of lads who got on. There was a great sense of camaraderie amongst the group.”

“Six weeks before I was just excited about being in the squad, next thing you’ve been part of the team that’s won the T20 World Cup,” says Yardy.

“I think a lot of the time, it feels like it’s the forgotten World Cup,” Wright says. “So much has been spoken about the 50-over World Cup that we won, and rightly so. But being the first-ever World Cup and ICC tournament that England won, when we achieved it, it made it feel so special.”

The good times didn’t roll on for England’s limited-overs sides.Barring a run to the 2013 Champions Trophy final, other tournaments over the following five years only delivered disappointment. By the end of the 2015 50-over World Cup, after a group-stage exit that would precipitate a revolutionary shift in style, England’s white-ball efforts looked antiquated in comparison to the rest of the world.

“Maybe after that they went back to ‘old England’ a bit,” Lumb argues. “There were similar sides in Test cricket and white-ball cricket, and I think they probably took their foot off the gas a little. With the T20 World Cup, Andy and Paul had a set plan of how they wanted to go about things. And I think the period after that, there wasn’t much planning in how they wanted to play.

“It’s only since Morgs [Morgan] and Trevor [Bayliss] came along with how they wanted to go about things that it changed. But I think it all just went a bit old school. The game kept on moving and maybe England just stood still in the way they were thinking and the plans they had in that period.”

Nevertheless, for three weeks in the Caribbean, England were the side that had it all together. “It came a little out of the blue,” says Yardy. “But if you get a team that gels together, plans are clear and people fulfil their roles, then anything can happen.”