England hero Rehan Ahmed told to ‘bat like Sehwag’ by coach Brendon McCullum

Rehan Ahmed revealed Brendon McCullum told him to bat like Virender Sehwag before he helped England pull off a remarkable heist to go into the T20 World Cup semi-finals with a bang.

The 21-year-old marked his maiden World Cup appearance with a first-ball wicket, finishing with a respectable two for 28 after replacing Jamie Overton for their final Super 8 match against New Zealand.

England, though, were staring defeat in the face, needing 43 off the last 19 balls when he arrived at the crease, only for Rehan and star man Will Jacks to flip the script in astonishing fashion.

The pair’s unbroken 44-run stand in 16 balls on a spinning Colombo wicket where scoring was difficult carried England home by four wickets as they finished top of their group with three wins out of three.

Rehan finished unbeaten on 19 from seven balls in what was the most intense pressure situation of his young career, having been freed by England head coach McCullum to bat like India great Sehwag.

McCullum was sitting on the England balcony when he relayed the advice via walkie-talkie to Rehan, who was sitting pitch side before he went out to bat, and the youngster followed the direction to a tee.

“Baz actually sent one of the walkie talkie messages downstairs, saying ‘tell Reh to bat like Sehwag’,” Rehan said.

“Yesterday in training on a similar wicket, I was trying to play that certain way. I was trying to hit sixes straight because the role I’ll be in the team will be similar to the way I’ve trained for that.”

Jacks collected his fourth player of the match award of the tournament, with only former Australia all-rounder Shane Watson scooping as many at a single T20 World Cup, doing so in 2012 in Sri Lanka.

His part-time off-spin yielded the wickets of dangermen Finn Allen and Glenn Phillips before Jacks produced another stunning salvo from number seven, where he has had several telling cameos.

“Ideally I would do nothing because I’m the extra bowler and extra batter,” Jacks said. “If I didn’t bowl and didn’t bat, (that would mean) we’d have had that perfect game that we keep speaking about.

“At the end of the day, no one really cares, we obviously want to play well but we’re not gutted we haven’t played a perfect game. That’s T20 cricket.

“What we’ve done well is in the key moments, we’ve kept a calm and clear head and we’ve managed to get those rewards. Having won all three games in the Super 8s now, everyone in that team is on a high.”

England overhauling New Zealand’s 159 for seven means they will likely play either India or the West Indies in Mumbai next Thursday and Kiwi captain Mitch Santner admitted they will be tough to stop.

“I wouldn’t want to be facing them,” Santner said.

While England return to India on Sunday with a spring in their step, concerns linger over the form of Jos Buttler, dismissed for a two-ball duck to leave him with 15 runs in his last five innings.

Jacks, though, has backed his team-mate to turn a corner in the knockout stages.

“Knockout cricket is a different beast,” Jacks added. “It is a one-off day. Anyone can play a match-winning innings and that’s that. Form means nothing.

“The beauty of the guys we have at the top is they don’t change the way they play. They are very selfless and team first. We know whoever we come up against they will be putting them under pressure.”