U19 World Cup Diary: "There's a real buzz around, and England have no one to fear in this competition"

England Under-19 batsman JACK HAYNES joins The Cricketer from South Africa ahead of his side's Group B opener against the West Indies on Monday

England Under-19 and Worcestershire batsman JACK HAYNES is joining The Cricketer throughout this year's Under-19 Cricket World Cup in South Africa.

On the eve of their opening group game, Haynes tells XAVIER VOIGT-HILL about his teammates, working with coaches Ian Bell and Jon Lewis, and the squad's rigorous year-long preparation.

Cricket has always been a massive passion of mine, and it really runs in the family. I was born in Worcester in 2001, my dad Gavin played over 200 matches for Worcestershire throughout the 1990s, and I've played a fair bit with my older brother Josh for the county 2nd XI as well.

I've played for Worcestershire ever since I was about nine, and it's obviously really exciting to have an opportunity to play cricket for a living and now represent my country in a World Cup. I made my first-class debut against Australia last summer and played four more County Championship games at the end of the season, but I'm really excited to take on this step up over the next month in South Africa. 

My first series for the Under-19 side was against South Africa at home in 2018. I was 17 when I got the call, and it was even more special because I was quite young and they obviously saw a bit of potential, which was nice. Being part of the setup has given me a lot of good experiences and now, two years down the line, I feel pretty comfortable and confident playing with most of the same guys.

Older lads from the 2018 World Cup team – like Tom Banton and Ethan Bamber – moved on after that series, and ever since that it's always been pretty clear that we were really targeting this competition.

The squads for our trips to India, Bangladesh and the West Indies last year were all selected with the World Cup firmly in mind, so it's quite exciting that we're actually here now. It seems pretty surreal because we've been building up to it for so long, with various training camps up in Loughborough and so much time spent together as a team, both on the field and off it.

There's a lot of confidence around the group in their own games and each other's games. Seven of us have played first-team games for our counties, and to know that we've got that sort of experience and people who've played under that sort of pressure and have gone to that level is obviously exciting. But at the end of the day, if we don't produce results and we don't play well, then it means nothing. 

^{Worcestershire batsman Haynes was first called up to the Young Lions setup aged 17}

We had a great time out in Antigua last month playing against the West Indies and Sri Lanka in a tri-series, and training has been pretty intense since we landed in Pretoria two weeks ago. The heat in Caribbean was a little more moist and sticky than you would typically get out here, but having that month-long tour so recently has really helped us all adjust to South African conditions quickly, even after spending 10 days back home for Christmas before flying out to Pretoria.

Looking at our strengths, we've got a lot of power and a lot of depth in our batting. Joey Evison is going very nicely at the moment – he’s an allrounder who has just signed for three years with Nottinghamshire. Joey strikes the ball very cleanly, and he can really offer some firepower at the end of the innings.

Blake Cullen has bowled beautifully in training and really nicely in Antigua. I think he's a really exciting seamer, especially on pitches like these with a bit of pace and bounce. It wouldn't surprise me if he took quite a few top orders down. And then there’s Ben Charlesworth, who is like our anchor at the top. 

We've got a squad of 15 that could all quite easily play in our starting XI, and we all built a really close bond over the summer when we played a tri-series at home against India and Bangladesh. Everyone is really good mates with each other – we just had an eight hour, 500 kilometre bus journey from Johannesburg to Kimberley without any bickering, which is always a really good sign!

As a group we’ve been together for so much of the past year, so it's pretty cool to just walk down from the hotel room and not feel like you have to introduce yourself to anyone. It doesn't feel like a new team, which I reckon is how some of the teams out here might feel.

Over the last few months we’ve shown that we can generally beat anybody on our day, and I think we’re a real fighting team. When we're on it, we're really, really on it. When we're going, we're all in it together. There's a real good buzz around the squad and we're all playing for each other, so we've got no one to fear in the competition, and I think that's really exciting. If everyone takes responsibility in games, then I think we'll be in a good place to go a long way.

^{"Blake Cullen is bowling beautifully, and Ben Charlesworth is like our anchor at the top."}

Jon Lewis has been our coach for the last two years, and he makes it easy for the lads to speak how they really feel. It's a very open environment to fail and to learn, which is brilliant, and we've all got used to that. Having Ian Bell join us for the winter been brilliant too. Especially for the batters, there's just so much you can learn from conversations with someone who played 100-plus Tests. He's great to talk to about the game, a very calming influence in the dressing room, and I think he's exactly what you're looking for in a batting coach.

At the moment our focus is entirely the West Indies game on Monday – we'll deal with the Australia and Nigeria games further down the line. We’ll obviously have a look at how they go in their other games, but we're not trying to overthink it. We beat the West Indies lads twice in the three games we played out in Antigua, but those were very different conditions and we know they’ll come back out a different team entirely. 

Being a World Cup just takes the intensity up a notch for everyone, and everyone will probably be a lot hungrier for it. There's obviously a few nerves flying around, but we're well aware that everyone's going to be up for a fight.

Those games were played on slow pitches that were pretty tough for batting; here, it's almost reversed, as batting does seem a bit easier on flatter pitches, and maybe the margin for error for the bowling is going to be a little smaller. It's great to be based in Kimberley for all three of our group games – it should give us a real chance to get familiar with how to play at the ground, and we were there yesterday to have a look at how Australia and the West Indies were looking in their match.

This is the first time the Under-19 World Cup has been back in South Africa since England won the tournament in 1998, and we do get reminded about it even though it was three years before most of us were born! But no, obviously we've talked bits and pieces in the players' group about the past and how well they did, and it would be pretty cool if we could if we could go and replicate that this year. 

As a team, we always talk about having an even perspective on life and cricket, and we seem to strike that balance really well. Of course when we're playing or training we're 100 per cent focused on that, but when we have downtime it is important to take your mind off cricket for a little bit and just enjoy each other's company. We'll only get to experience this once, so it's important to really enjoy everything that comes with it.