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NEW DELHI: England all-rounder Liam Dawson on Monday said the side is “in a very good place” despite an up-and-down group stage in the T20 World Cup, and voiced his satisfaction at the strength of their spin resources.

England advanced to the Super 8s after a tense stretch that included a 30-run defeat to West Indies and narrow victories over Nepal and Scotland.

They responded strongly by thumping co-hosts Sri Lanka in their opening Super 8 fixture and now gear up to face Pakistan here on Tuesday.

"The fight we've shown with the ball (against Sri Lanka) shows that this team is in a very good place," Dawson told reporters ahead of the Pakistan clash.

After being limited to 146/9, England bundled out Sri Lanka for 95 to seal a 51-run win, with spinners claiming seven of the 10 wickets.

Will Jacks struck with 3/22 in four overs through his off-breaks, while Adil Rashid and Dawson chipped in with two wickets each.

Spin trio in sync

"We're all very different types of spinners. Jacksy gets a lot of overspin and a lot of bounce. Dilly (Rashid) has all his variations. Me - I sort of don't get the bounce that the other two get.

"It will be a different challenge on Tuesday night (against Pakistan). We might get a better batting wicket. We'll have to see," Dawson said.

"The beauty of this ground (Pallekele) is that you can bowl whenever and be versatile. We've got four good spinners, with (Jacob) Bethell. And we've exploited conditions here in the past. If it's a lot better wicket on Tuesday, we might need different plans and to work differently.

"We're all very experienced. If you look at the amount of cricket that me and Adil have played, even Jacks as well, it's probably only with Beth that's probably got a little bit less experience."

Not just about Usman Tariq

Dawson underlined that England are planning for Pakistan as a complete unit rather than focusing solely on mystery spinner Usman Tariq. Pakistan also boast options such as Shadab Khan, Abrar Ahmed, Saim Ayub, Salman Agha and Mohammad Nawaz.

"It's not all about Tariq. They're a very good team with some dangerous players and Tariq's obviously a very good bowler.

"But we're not going to just look at him. We'll look at the whole team and see how we can nullify them."

Results matter most

England may not have dazzled consistently in the tournament, but Dawson stressed that winning is what counts in knockout cricket.

"Of course, we know that we can play a lot better than we've played, but at the end of the day in tournament cricket you just need to get the win. However ugly it looks," said Dawson.

"I think we were very good in the bilateral series here against Sri Lanka, where we played spin. We had a couple of tough games potentially, but we won.

"And then, on the day we know that we can bat a lot better than what we batted, but we've won games and that's the main thing."

(With PTI Inputs)