England slumped to their biggest ever defeat in men’s ODIs after electing to bowl first and conceding 399 runs against South Africa at the Wankhede. It was a decision which both their captain and head coach admitted as “potentially” wrong after the game.

Jos Buttler won the toss in England’s crunch match against South Africa and elected to field first in sweltering Mumbai heat today (October 21). With the changes made to their side from their defeat to Afghanistan, England were fielding only five frontline bowlers, with no all-rounders in their side. Joe Root was their back-up option should he be needed, with Ben Stokes back in the side but not fit enough to bowl.

When the players left the field after South Africa had registered their mammoth total, they all looked in significant discomfort from the heat. David Willey had cramped up during the back-end of the bowling innings and the fielders also looked in considerable pain. While batting, Heinrich Klaasen also struggled in the heat, and did not come out to field in the chase.

After the match, Buttler admitted the decision was an error when asked by Michael Atherton whether he should’ve batted first. “Potentially,” he replied. “I think you always look back and reflect on the decisions you made. There were obviously incredibly tough conditions here with the heat and I thought we saw that with the boys in the field. Everyone put in a great shift, and I still believe if it was 340 or 350 and we got off to a good start it would have been a really good chase. But yeah, potentially I should have batted first with the heat.”

Buttler also elaborated that the conditions were “as tough as he’d experienced”. “Yeah, certainly tough,” he said. “I think the humidity and, you know, the cramps and all the other challenged that went into it as well, it was tough.”

Jos Buttler admits bowling first was ‘potentially’ a mistake.#ENGvSA #CWC23 pic.twitter.com/boSKsKrOmV

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) October 21, 2023

England white-ball head coach Matthew Mott also said, in hindsight, the decision at the toss should have been different. “It was a hard night for us,” he said. “I think we came in with really good intentions in this game. I thought it was a fantastic cricket wicket. We looked at the ground stats and it said it was a good chasing ground, on reflection the heat was perhaps more than we bargained for. It certainly looked a little bit like a war down there at times.”

England’s record recently when chasing is poor. They last won a game batting second in March of this year, but Mott felt it was with the ball, rather than the bat, that England lost the game: “Yeah, hindsight’s great. But I think we went out there in that powerplay to do a job and I think we were well on our way to that. Obviously we let it spiral in the last ten overs… To be honest, if we got a couple more wickets there [in the first 40 overs] we could have restricted them to under 300.”

Later on in the interview, Mott also explained England’s selection choices going into the game. “We will definitely look back and reflect on that for a long time,” he said. “Having someone at seven who could really influence a match like Livingstone and Ali has definitely been the blueprint, but I don’t think that was the difference between the two teams today. I thought they thoroughly outplayed us.”

After the loss, England now sit second-from bottom on the group table, level on points with Afghanistan but with a 0.002 advantage on net run rate. Their next match is against Sri Lanka on Thursday, October 26.

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