Mark Butcher calls for changes following England's T20 World Cup exit

Against India in the semi-finals, England faced a 68-run defeat to crash out of the tournament unceremoniously. The humiliating loss led to several England players’ places in the side coming under scrutiny, including Moeen Ali and Jonny Bairstow, who were far from their best in the tournament.

Speaking on the Wisden Cricket Podcast, Butcher felt the duo had made their last appearance in England’s white-ball outfit. He also questioned England's decision to bench Ben Duckett for the entire competition despite being in the squad.

"I think going forward it is more than likely the last we'll see of Moeen and the last we'll see of Jonny in the T20 team. Somebody like Will Jacks will certainly find himself in a place. Whether Ben Duckett does or not, I don't know. That’s a slightly different conversation but given he was there and given what his skill set is, for him not to have appeared at all is quite extraordinary I think," Butcher said.

England didn't use Moeen at all in the semi-final on a slowish Georgetown pitch, where a four-pronged Indian spin attack dominated the proceedings. Butcher felt the decision was "baffling".

"And you know, having made the decision not to pick the left-arm spinner (Tom Hartley), which again I can kind of understand because he's not wildly experienced in T20Is and it's the semi-final of the World Cup," he said. "But having decided not to play him then you have another spinner in the lineup and he didn't bowl, it's just slightly baffling."

He added: "Though England can be flexible in terms of batting lineup given all the all-rounders they picked and they can shift people around, they were incredibly sort of stubborn in terms of trying to plug in the right personnel for the job that they were facing in the conditions that they were playing in and eventually that's hurt them. I mentioned Rohit and his astute captaincy. There has been a suspicion there is a lack of that kind of astuteness that being willing to think on your feet, that playing what is right in front of you, in front of your nose and instead relying a little bit more on whatever the numbers might say about certain matchups on a perfect day as opposed to imperfectness which we've encountered over the course of the competition."

England had a topsy-turvy T20 World Cup campaign. They stumbled through the group stage and had to rely on net run-rate to make it to the Super Eights. Then, they lost to South Africa in the next round, denting their hopes again but eventually qualified for the semi-finals as the second team from the group.

Butcher pointed out England’s inconsistency and opined their campaign to be “pretty damn close” to being “dire” when compared to their ODI World Cup debacle last year, where they won only three out of their nine matches. He further criticised England white-ball coach Matthew Mott and captain Jos Buttler for their back-to-back failures in global events, calling for a change at the helm.

"Over the entire World Cup, England only managed to beat the West Indies on a belter in St. Lucia and every time they came up against an equal or high-ranked opposition, they got beaten, they got found out. So it is pretty not quite as dire as the 50-over World Cup but pretty damn close. So that's two on the trot now for the Mott-Buttler partnership at the helm. You still have to say that given the resources that England have in terms of the personnel that they had there, a semi-final and particularly in the way that they got there, was a pretty disappointing show. There must be better to come out of the group of talented players.

"Archer was back. Archer was a massive plus. It was huge for England. Phil Salt has come out of it with an enormous amount of credit but not too many other people have and therefore you can sort of say, ‘Oh well, maybe, they're not good enough players.’ I don't believe that for a second. I don't think they've been particularly astutely led throughout this [tournament]. I don't think they've got the best out of the resources that they've had.

"I think the change is coming at some point. Now would be a very good time to start. It might be that one or both sort of step down or are stepped down and some fresh eyes are brought into the whole thing because there is no doubt in my mind that there is the ability and the depth in terms of English Cricket to kind of build another sort of dynasty of dominant white-ball cricket teams for the next five, six, seven, eight years. But at the moment, there's no improvement. They sort of stumble from one game to the next without what looks like a sort of coherent idea of what they're going to do, how are they going to play, what sort of balance of the team they might need and that's really hurting them at the moment."

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