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World Cup 2023: England expectedly bite the dust, again
An eight-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka has almost ended the defending champions’ chances of making it to the last four
It’s impossible to understand what England must be going through since defending champions never had it this bad. At their peak, West Indies and Australia were a cut above the rest with boring consistency. Follow-up acts of other sides weren’t too bad either — India made the semi-finals in 1987 and 2015, Pakistan made the last eight in 1996, even the most modest Australia team in their history managed to reach the 2019 semi-finals. Sri Lanka of 1999 perhaps? Even they beat Zimbabwe and Kenya. England are still in the hunt for a second win.
And it might stay that way. So tell-tale were some of the earliest signs that this capitulation to Sri Lanka could have been detected from a mile away. Poor planning, rudderless leadership, clueless batting, shambolic game awareness – England have let themselves down and it can’t be good for the game if the semi-finalists are pretty much decided with 20 matches still to go.
There is no single event that stands out as England’s World Cup low point. Against New Zealand, the bowling didn’t quite align with the conditions in Ahmedabad. Playing away from the body against Afghanistan proved to be disastrous in Delhi. Inviting South Africa to make first use of a Wankhede pitch wasn’t wise; and attempts to overcompensate at Bengaluru -- the last ODI at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium produced 672 runs — boomeranged. Sometimes the opposition was better than England. The rest of the time, England kept finding new ways to lose.
It was largely the batting that delivered this humiliation, with Bengaluru on Thursday underpinning England’s torrid run in a defeat to Sri Lanka by eight wickets that came in just 59 overs.
It was the kind of show you don’t want to pay for, where a powerplay score of 59/2 inspired hopes of a promising innings before the next eight wickets tumbled for just 97 runs. At a ground where pacers medium and fast generally get carted around, Lahiru Kumara and the dibbly-dobbly bowling of Angelo Mathews exposed England in unimaginable ways. Sri Lanka were brilliant in the field and equally insipid was England’s batting.
Choosing to bat, of course, was done to prove a point. And to further unshackle their potential, England included three all-rounders in Liam Livingstone, Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes. But the core issue went unaddressed. England have lost 47 wickets in five matches now, second most after Netherlands’ 48. Never in their five-six years of dominance in white-ball cricket have England looked so dismal.
An impulsive response would be to paint this downfall as a tipping point of an era. But a team of great strikers of the ball don’t overnight go off the boil, at the same time. There were glimpses of attempts to break free, when Dawid Malan started taking on the bowling. Like in the past, Ben Stokes too got his share of reprieves and lives but there was no miraculous turnaround this time.
What exactly has got into England? “There’s no clear answer at the moment,” said a distraught skipper Jos Buttler at the post-match presentation. “Can't really fault the boys’ efforts but we’re playing a long way short of our best. It starts from the front, as captain you want to lead from the front and play well and I've been a long way short of my best.”
Self loathing might seem an obvious recourse at this point, but this can’t be only the players’ doing. To find what has really set England back so much so quickly mandates deeper introspection that has to start with the English board copping some of the blame, sacrificing one-dayers at the altar of Test and T20 supremacy. Players obviously had to play ball. “You don't become a bad team overnight,” said Buttler. “That's probably the biggest frustration, that we've been so far short of our best, and for no obvious reason. Just can’t put my finger on it at the moment. The kind of mistakes we’re all making, you don’t see that usually. We haven’t been doing the basic things well.
“It's a shock to everyone,” Buttler later said at the post-match press conference. “I'll walk back in the dressing room after this and look at the players sat there and think how we found ourselves in this position with the talent and the skill that's in the room. But it is the position we’re in, it’s the reality of what’s happened over the last three weeks and that’s a huge low point.”
Mathematically, England still have a chance of qualifying for the semi-finals, but Buttler didn’t beat around the bush. “It certainly looks that way (England eliminated) and that’s incredibly disappointing. You get on the plane to come to India and we’re in a really good position as a team. Everything was looking like it’s going to plan and it just didn’t work at all.”
Brief scores: England 156 in 33.2 overs (B Stokes 43, K Rajitha 2/36, A Mathews 2/14, L Kumara 3/35); Sri Lanka 160/2 in 25.4 overs (P Nissanka 77*, S Samarawickrama 65*, D Willey 2/30). Sri Lanka won by 8 wickets.
