England made the Super Eights after a tense couple of weeks that saw a 30-run loss to the West Indies and narrow wins over Nepal and Scotland.
However, it humbled tournament co-host Sri Lanka in its first Super Eights fixture and will face Pakistan in Pallekele on Tuesday.
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“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 game.
After being restricted to 146 for nine, England bowled out Sri Lanka for 95 to emerge as the winner by 51 runs, with its spinners accounting for seven of the 10 wickets.
Will Jacks, with his off-breaks, picked up three for 22 in four overs, while there were two wickets apiece for Adil Rashid and Dawson.
“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 Adil and I have played, even Jacks as well, it’s probably only with Beth that’s probably got a little bit less experience.”
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Dawson also stressed that England is preparing for the Pakistan team as a whole, and not just its mystery spinner Usman Tariq. Besides Tariq, Pakistan also has the likes of Shadab Khan, Abrar Ahmed, Saim Ayub, Salman Agha and Mohammad Nawaz to call upon.
“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.”
England may not have set the tournament ablaze, but Dawson emphasised the importance of results.
“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.”
Published on Feb 23, 2026
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