England are rock bottom of the World Cup table having not so subtly treated ODI cricket with a lack of respect in the years leading up to their title defence, writes Yas Rana.
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“If we’re going to go out, let’s at least go out with a bang.” Those were the almost foreboding words of England vice-captain Moeen Ali on the eve of his side’s calamitous defeat to Sri Lanka. English cricket does catastrophic World Cup exits better than most. In 1999 they were famously dumped out of a home World Cup before the release of the official World Cup song. After finishing as runners up in 1992, England would wait 27 years before once more winning a World Cup knockout game. Campaigns were remembered by iconic defeats; the heartbreak of letting a formidable position slip against Ponting’s Australia in 2003, or the humiliation of slipping up against nations with vastly inferior resources like Ireland and Bangladesh in 2011 and 2015. England’s tapestry of World Cup failure is as rich as any other nation’s.
But even among England’s catalogue of farcical World Cup exits, this stands out. The team that took the baton from Brendon McCullum’s New Zealand in 2015 to become genuine trailblazers and the first double world champions in the men’s game, effectively dumped out of the World Cup with nearly a month of cricket left.
Basically everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. They turned up to the World Cup woefully short on recent ODI cricket; the majority of the top six, for instance, were without a successful run chase under their belts for over two years. But even a lack of middle time can’t explain the extent to which a general malaise has gripped their batting line up.
Much of the talk after the mauling by South Africa was about rediscovering the sense of abandon and fearlessness that made them such a formidable side four years ago. There’s a difference, though, between saying that you want to be confident and actually being confident. This was evident from the moment the team was revealed at the toss for the Sri Lanka game as England responded to their own calls of aggression by dropping their most attacking batter at the tournament so far.
England were bowled out for 147 and 129 against Sri Lanka and India respectively having actually started both innings well. Against Sri Lanka, Malan and Bairstow took England to 45-0 in the seventh over; against India, England were 30-0 in the fifth over. Talk of losing confidence is often a fairly nebulous discussion in sport but here you could tangibly identify it. In both cases, the wheels came off in spectacular fashion. As soon as something went wrong, everything went wrong.
They have looked like a team that has forgotten how to play the format. They have repeatedly got stuck against spin this tournament. Six times in six games an opposition spinner has completed a spell with an economy rate of less than four against England; on three of those occasions, the economy rates have been less than three. Too often a build up of pressure has resulted in an overcompensation from one extreme to the other. The most striking illustration of this muddled mindset was Ben Stokes’ innings against India. Welcomed to the crease by an outstanding spell from Shami, he battled through nine deliveries without scoring before resorting to a wild, premeditated hoick only appropriate for a ball different to the one that was actually delivered. England have totally mismanaged the balance of absorbing and applying pressure, the fundamental essence of ODI cricket.
England’s players arrived at this World Cup with far less recent ODI experience than any of their competitors and it is showing. A compressed post-pandemic schedule, the busiest Test calendar going and the recent glut of T20 World Cups led to a natural deprioritisation of ODI cricket but the extent of England’s lack of preparation is partly due to choice.
England often radiated a not-so-subtle disinterest towards 50-over cricket in the run-up to the World Cup. Stokes effectively quit on the spot a month after the retirement of Eoin Morgan halfway through England’s penultimate home ODI series before the squad would fly out to India. Joe Root hadn’t scored an ODI hundred since the 2019 World Cup yet decided to play in the ILT20 instead of his sole opportunity to play ODIs between July 2022 and September 2023. Root currently averages 20.80 from 16 ODIs since the start of last year.
Moeen described England’s ODI series against a full-strength Australia which started four days after they lifted the T20 World Cup as “horrible”, explaining “to give 100 per cent all the time is difficult when you’re playing every two or three days.” A fair point but one that loses its sting considering Moeen jetted across the world to captain in Morrisville Samp Army’s Abu Dhabi T10 opener less than 48 hours after their third and final ODI defeat in Australia.
This is a side that paid the format minimal respect between World Cups just as several elder statesmen secured lucrative deals that will take them well past their 35th birthdays as centrally contracted players. It has been a truly spectacular capitulation, one that rivals and maybe even tops the dismantling of the other world-leading England men’s side this century, Flower’s Test team that lost 5-0 in Australia nearly exactly a decade ago.
