The pre-tournament build up was optimistic.
After the disaster of the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the re-born England one-day teams began to play exciting, care free cricket that had been absent from the sides for so long.
Winning One-day series against New Zealand and Pakistan and only losing 3-2 to Australia and South Africa, as well as T20 victories versus Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand created a buzz around the team that hadn't been around for a long time.
But as T20 International cricket is, one player can win a game by himself.
After setting 182-6 from 20 overs, a score that many described as par, Chris Gayle scored his second T20I century in potentially his last T20 world cup to secure an opening victory for the West Indies in a group that many predicted they wouldn't escape.
After Darren Sammy won the toss and put England into bat, the side started steadily with Jason Roy and Alex Hales putting on 37 before Roy was caught at midwicket for 15. Hales and Joe Root shared a partnership of 55 before Hales was cleverly yorked by Sulieman Benn. From there Root top-scored with 48 and contributions from Buttler, Morgan and Stokes took them to a total below what they expected.
England started brightly with the ball. David Willey removed Johnston Charles for a duck, but from then on it was the Gayle show. Marlon Samuels scored 37 to allow Gayle to find his range, but after he fell nothing could hold Gayle back. He signaled his intentions with two successive sixes off Rashid, the first an 89 metre blow down the ground. Moeen Ali took the worst of it, Gayle scoring 33 from 14 balls, including three sixes in a row.
Gayle broke his own record for the most sixes in a world T20 innings, hitting 11 as well as taking the record of most T20 sixes from the newly retired Brendon McCullum.
By the end of the night there were doubts England would even be the third best team in the group, let alone make the semi-finals. Such is the effect of the Gayle Force.
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