England reignite T20 World Cup title defence with win over Windies

Defending champions England brushed aside their struggles in the opening phase of the Twenty20 World Cup with an eight-wicket victory over the previously unbeaten West Indies in their Super Eight opener in St Lucia on Wednesday.

England's bowlers restricted West Indies to 180-4 on the same pitch where the co-hosts had scored 218 against Afghanistan on Monday before opener Phil Salt led the way with 87 from 47 balls as the batters got the job done inside 18 overs.

Having squeaked into the second stage on net run rate, England will take a huge boost of confidence from beating one of the in-form teams at the tournament to top Group 2 with South Africa, who they meet at the same ground on Friday.

"I thought we did really well to restrict such a powerful batting lineup," said England captain Jos Buttler.

"It's still a decent score and you have to play well to chase them down. But I thought we were very smart with the bat."

The meeting of the only two teams to have won the T20 World Cup twice was expected to be a run-fest and much of the credit for the win will go to the England bowlers for preventing the big-hitting locals from cutting loose.

Having won the toss and elected to field, they served up 51 dot balls and took regular wickets in the second half of the innings to prevent any of the West Indies batters from reaching a half century.

"I think we left 15-20 runs out there as a batting group (and) we could have give a better display with the ball," West Indies skipper Rovman Powell said.

"Credit has to be given to England bowling unit, you can see they have killer plans and the execution was good."

A groin injury ended opener Brandon King's night on 23 but West Indies would still have been confident of a big score when they reached the halfway point of their innings on 82 without loss.

Just when they would have been looking to accelerate, however, the other opener, Johnson Charles, fell into a trap and holed out in the deep for 38 off the bowling of Moeen Ali.

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