Speaking on the latest Wisden T20 World Cup Daily podcast, Mark Butcher questioned the effectiveness of England’s batting lineup after their stuttering performance in their eventual win against New Zealand.
England beat New Zealand by 20 runs on Tuesday in a must-win match for Jos Buttler’s side following their defeat to Ireland. Batting first, Moeen Ali was promoted up the order after they reached 81-0 in the 11th over. Following his dismissal two overs later, Liam Livingstone was also promoted above Dawid Malan, Ben Stokes and Harry Brook to try and give England an explosive finish to the innings and push their total nearer to 200.
After Livingstone was dismissed, however, all of Brook, Stokes and Malan were unable to truly get going in the time left in the innings, Malan was left to face just one ball coming in at No. 8. They posted 179-6 which, in the end, New Zealand were unable to chase down thanks to superb bowling at the end of the innings from Sam Curran and Chris Woakes.
“I don’t think it is working, and I made this point before a ball was bowled in the tournament,” said Butcher. “Anyone that calls himself a batsman, even in the shortest formats, everybody likes to be able to go in and have a few deliveries to get themselves going because you’re good enough to back yourself to get in. What you’re doing is you’re asking proper batters, not guys who are coming in down the order as all-rounders like Sam Curran who are happy to go out there and try to swing the bat at the end which is what they’re used to, but if you ask any batter worth his salt on a regular basis to try and hit sixes and fours from the minute they get to the crease – they don’t like doing it and they’re not particularly good at doing it either.
“For me, what happened today was good, obviously, because England moved their resources around. They got off to the perfect start in the first ten and got their better hitters or better strikers I suppose to come up the order. But what it illustrates is, if Dawid Malan isn’t going to bat if you get off to a good start and if Ben Stokes is going to end up batting down at, whatever six or seven, then one of them shouldn’t be playing right? It’s as simple as that.”
Since coming back into the side in Australia before the World Cup started, Stokes has struggled to find fluency with the bat and is yet to make a double figures score in the tournament. Dawid Malan has also come under pressure for his strike-rate at No.3, especially after making 35 off 37 balls in England’s loss to Ireland which put their chances of knockout qualification in doubt.
Butcher believes England’s batting riches are putting pressure on the middle and lower order to score too quickly too early in their innings, leading to the side not fulfilling their obvious potential to post huge scores.
“You shouldn’t be picking the side based on the worst case scenario,” he said. “Listen, we need everybody to be able to have their chance at getting themselves in and we back them all to make fifties, sixties and some of them are capable of making hundreds from nine or ten overs out. But none of them are going to be able to do that because none of them have had the time to get out there.
“However, that’s not to say it wasn’t a fantastic performance from England… I just think they’re giving themselves too many thing to worry about and think about.
“England teams have never been shy about moving their batting order around…You find yourselves in positions in T20 games where the bowling that’s left or the match-ups you have or the dimensions of the ground say that one guy is going to go in in front of another, and that always happens that’s not rocket science. But England are having to do it all of the time because they find themselves with too many players, too many batters.”
Butcher’s solution to the issue is to leave out one of England’s left-handers in their middle-order.
“On the evidence of today you would say one of the three left-handers ought to probably miss-out,” said Butcher. “Allowing England to bring in another specialist bowler and they would still have the resources they need.
“For me, Moeen Ali plays, and it’s between Stokes and Malan. Now Malan batted for one delivery, and he doesn’t bowl and he doesn’t field in any of the hot spots so at the moment you look at it and go out of the two that you’d think are surplus to requirements, Dawid Malan is the one.”
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