England suffered a record defeat against South Africa at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai yesterday, October 21, their third in four matches at the 2023 World Cup.

Winning the toss, Jos Buttler elected to field first. The decision proved to backfire as South Africa piled on a mountain of runs in the searing Mumbai heat. Heinrich Klaasen was the star of show, scoring a 61-ball hundred despite battling severe exhaustion.

Chasing a mammoth target of 400, England were bundled out for 170 to lose the game by 229 runs. With this, they have to win as good as all five of their remaining games to stand a chance of qualification for the semi-finals. Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Nasser Hussain was critical of England’s off-field decision-making, and how they were not relying on their gut feel at all.

“It’s not the three losses. The three losses will hurt you. They lost three in the last World Cup, in the middle of that, but it was the way they were playing. You felt in that World Cup those three losses, so that was an England side that had confidence or years, and were playing the style and brand of cricket that they could bounce back from. This side, at the moment, looks like a side that have no confidence and have gone away from what they’ve always done.

“I think they could do it (win the remaining five matches), but they’ve left themselves a whole heap to do. They’ve got to win every game and they’ve got to get, anyone could be beaten, anyone could have a bad day, a bad tournament, to get your decision making right off the field.

Against South Africa, England played with just one spinner, Adil Rashid, leaving out both Liam Livingstone and Moeen Ali. Hussain explained that the move, while backed by historical data at the venue, was not necessarily right.

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“I go to stats, I hear stats a lot. [Eoin] Morgan used stats. But there was also a lot of gut feeling there as well. Today, the stats would have probably said the seamers bowl better than your spinners here.

“I’m trying to explain things to you at home. Why would they leave out Livingstone and Moeen Ali at seven? Because the stats tell them that the seamer does better than the spinner here. So if they play another spinner in Livingstone or Ali, then they’re leaving a seamer out. So they play the extra seamer down there, but that leaves them vulnerable at No.7.”

After the game, England coach Matthew Mott said that they had elected to field first looking at historical numbers of the venue, but it might have been the wrong decision in hindsight.

Hussain said that the over-dependence on numbers might be harming England: “And then the stats with chasing. The only thing with the stats with chasing here, a lot of those would be IPL stats where the game’s still going on now (9 pm local time) and the dew is coming down now. But the game’s finished early again.

“So the stats… have that gut feel, just look up at the heat and humidity and go, ‘You know what? This is a belter of a pitch. We are a very good batting side, we are going hard, we’re going to play Livingstone at seven.’ Livingstone on this small ground could win you a game. Go hard and win the game that way and put them under pressure in the field.”

“I keep repeating it. The quality of performance was not good enough, but get your decision making right off the field. That wasn’t right today.”