Former England captain Mark Butcher feels that England’s "arrogance" is the reason for everyone loving to see them lose.
England put up 351-8 in their 2025 Champions Trophy tournament opener, only for Australia to chase down the target with 15 balls to spare. In their next game, England lost to Afghanistan by eight runs and were knocked out of the tournament.
“What I will say is this, I completely and utterly understand why everybody loves seeing England lose,” said Butcher after the match on the Wisden Patreon podcast. “And the reason for this is this, and I’ve probably said this before long, long time back – the arrogance of English cricket to decide that after you strive for all that time to win a 50-over World Cup, and then within the next breath, you decide that it’s not important enough for your for your players to play.”
“The arrogance in that and the comeuppance that has come around, and some people might say: ‘Oh, well, you know, it’s causation. It's not. You know, these things aren’t necessarily the reason for X becoming Y. But all I will say to you is there’s no wonder ... the crowd there all supporting Afghanistan, whether they’re from, whether they’re from Afghanistan or Pakistan, or wherever they are.”
Afghanistan were cheered throughout the game by the fans in Lahore, many of whom were locals.
“The very thought that you, that you think that you can, you're good enough, basically, to decide that one format isn’t worth your time, but yet you still feel as though you’re sort of up there and deserving of winning these major trophies.
“It is part of the reason why people can’t stand us ... You go there in all of these competitions with very high hopes of winning and putting your best performance in and doing yourself and your country proud: what right do we have to think that you're going to be good enough to win a 50-over competition?”
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