England head coach Matthew Mott has conceded that England “are in a lot of trouble” despite their loss against Sri Lanka not mathematically discounting them from semi-final qualification.
To bet on the World Cup with our Match Centre Partners bet365 head here.
Sri Lanka thumped England by eight wickets in Bengaluru after the defending champions collapsed to 156 all out after electing to bat first. It was England’s third straight defeat in the competition after their losses to Afghanistan and South Africa, leaving them on two points in the league stage after five games.
Following Sri Lanka’s win, Mott fronted up to the media to explain where the tournament has gone so wrong for England. “I don’t know,” he said. “I had a quick chat with Jos then, it’s really hard to explain. I think we had a really good series leading in against New Zealand. We came over here full of confidence with some world class players who have won a lot of World Cups. For whatever reason we seem to have a few players out of form at the wrong time and that’s hurt us dearly.
When asked if the announcement earlier this week of which players would be awarded central contracts by the ECB played any part in distracting the players, Mott said: “I don’t think so, I think everyone coming into this World Cup’s sole focus was the World Cup. As I said the last time we caught up, they don’t happen very often these World Cups. We’ve unfortunately saved our worst form for when we needed it the most and it’s going to be a very somber dressing room tonight.
“We came here full of hope and hoping to turn things around and we were well off the mark. It’s going to be a real test of character to get through the next few weeks and salvage something out of this campaign.”
England made three changes to their side from the one that lost to South Africa in Mumbai. While one was enforced with Reece Topley sustaining a fractured finger during that game, they dropped Harry Brook and Gus Atkinson to make room for Liam Livingstone and Moeen Ali. England had also made three changes to their XI before the game in Mumbai.
When asked whether the changes led to confusion within the team, Mott said: “That’s for you guys to speculate. I think we always reserve the right to pick players for different conditions. We admitted last time that we probably got the balance a bit wrong, so therefore we went back to the same balance that we’ve had before.
“When you lose by that margin I don’t think it’s about a couple of small selections here and there. I think it’s a collective and we’ve all got to take responsibility of a sub-par effort in this campaign. Everyone is going to come from the hills to dissect everything we’ve done wrong but we’ve got to make sure we find some positives, we learn from it and I think we can. I think we can get better at everything we do, whether it is selection or it’s the way we prepare and we make sure that this isn’t wasted because it’s going to hurt a lot.”
Mott also commented on how the team could bounce back from their loss quickly before their next game against India on Sunday. “Probably not a lot tonight,” he said when asked what he would say to the team. “I don’t think that there’s a lot to be gained tonight but we’ll definitely catch up. We’ve been debriefing a lot about where we want to get better but as I said it’s going to be a very somber dressing room but everyone in there feels like they’ve let a lot of people down in terms of supporters, friends and family and everyone who’s in that room is really hurting.
“I think mathematically we’d have to have a lot of things go our way [to qualify for the semi-finals]. As I said leading into today we could control it going from there but it hasn’t done out net run rate any help at all and depending on others. We’ll keep fronting up and treating each game in isolation, as I said salvage some really good stuff out the back end of this but realistically we’re in a lot of trouble.”
