Sky Sports’ Nasser Hussain assesses England’s dismal World Cup season after the defending champions suffered their third successive defeat – an eight-wicket hammering at the hands of Sri Lanka – leaving them on the brink of an early exit from India…
Back to back I have not seen England play so badly (losses in South Africa and Sri Lanka).
They have changed their tactics and are going back to their all-rounders here. And they changed at the toss, batting first.
It really shows that tactics are important, the team is important and what you do at the toss is important, but the most important thing in any sport – and cricket in particular – is that players are in shape and at the top of their game. , especially at a World Cup.
Now if you walk into that England dressing room and ask them to put their hand on their heart and say, ‘Are you in good condition?’ I think maybe only one or two people can say that.
They have collapsed as a unit. Their form has failed them and it feels like we are coming to the end of an era. For some of them it has been a bridge too far.
That said, it’s so easy to be wise in hindsight. Some of those cricketers in that park today would be playing in your best ever white ball XI in England and I wouldn’t have changed things before the tournament
Would I have traded Jonny Bairstow? No. Would I trade Dawid Malan? No. Joe Root? He is one of our best white ball hitters. Ben Stokes? He’s actually won us two World Cups already. Adil Rashid? Mark wood? No.
What they have done overall is magical, but what they have done here in three weeks does not reflect the kind of players they are and what (Eoin) Morgan and Buttler have created. It’s a sad reflection of what they’ve been for the past six years.
We can be all doom and gloom and say ‘get rid of them all’, but they have given us six or seven years of brilliant white-ball cricket.
Blaming the English cricket structure is a lame excuse
What I don’t like is giving players an agent. Sometimes we do that in English cricket.
When they won the 50-over and T20 World Cups it was ‘aren’t they great’. But when the wheels come off, suddenly the problem is that it is the structure of English cricket.
They blame the fact that we play T20 cricket, 100-ball cricket, but not enough 50-over cricket. How much domestic 50-over cricket has Virat Kohli played? Or anyone here? They learn from T20 franchises around the world. That’s what this great England team has created over the last six years.
It’s such a lame excuse to blame the structure, the very same structure that made them world champions.
Yes, England may have lost track of the ball a bit and not given them enough training and matches in the run-up to the tournament, but it was this structure that produced them.
If they mess up, they’re the ones who mess up. In my opinion, they should take responsibility, and not the structure.
A sports psychologist once said to me: ‘If you stay at the same level, don’t think you’ll get better.’
It looked like a team that stayed at the same level and thought: ‘That will work, double world champions, we are doing well’. Well, they’re not doing well, they’re about to go out.
What’s next?
England are next in action against hosts India on Sunday (8am on Sky Sports Cricket, start 8.30am), with their hopes of qualification on the line. Watch every match of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 live on Sky Sports. You can stream the tournament NOW.