The chink in St George’s armour – how to defeat England ODI cricket team.
Expat Sport analyses the options available to England’s opposition if they hope to defeat them in the upcoming ICC World Cup 2019 England and Wales.
All the pre tournament talk is of England being very strong favourites on home turf along with such a formidable, aggressive team. And on paper it would be hard to argue with that opinion. They have won seventeen of their last 24 matches, many of those defeats coming in dead rubbers after completing series victories, as was the case in their most recent loss against Sri Lanka in Colombo. England, if the mood takes them, seemingly have the batting arsenal to literally blow other teams out of the water.
But then they have a day like they did against Sri Lanka, going down to what was a record ODI loss by a margin of 219 runs. This was their heaviest defeat by some margin breaking a record that had held since 1994 when they succumbed to a 164 run loss to West Indies. And such days give all the other teams in the upcoming world cup a glimmer of hope and perhaps more importantly some insight into how to best the best team in the world right now.
With the series wrapped up, England Captain Eoin Morgan decided to rest himself and a couple of other likely starters in next year’s World Cup, to give other squad members a chance to shine. And shine they did not.
Morgan stepped aside to allow Sam Curran his second ODI cap but in doing so reduced the number of specialist batsmen by one. Chris Woakes and Olly Stone were also rested for the game with Mark Wood and Liam Plunkett coming in as replacements. On paper seemingly formidable substitutes, but what ensued was an imbalanced, fractious mess.
By the time the rain came lashing down on the last match of what had been a poorly scheduled series, England had fallen on their sword going down, via Duckworth-Lewis to their largest ever ODI defeat.
Reflecting on their abysmal performance, Eoin Morgan had this to say:
“We didn’t take our game forward. Actually, there are areas where it went backwards. Our fielding was extremely poor, our attitude very poor and that has to be addressed. We will find an answer, otherwise we are just papering over the cracks.”
And more than anything it was their attitude that lost them this game. It seemed that when an opposing team exerted the same amount of ultra aggressive batting pressure on England as they so often exert on other teams, those cracks started to appear. Several arguments erupted on the field when sloppy fielding led to more runs being conceded or wicket chances going begging. Ben Stokes, renowned for a short temper, could not control himself on field and repeatedly berated team mates, most notably Moeen Ali and Mark Wood for misfielding culminating in him hurling the ball into the turf in rage.
The psychological damage was done by the opening partnership of Niroshan Dickwella and Sadeera Samarawickrama who launched their innings with a highly impressive 137 off just 19.1 overs. Dickwella went on to make 95. But the sloppiness of fielding continued throughout the Sri Lankan innings with Tom Curran dropping an easy catch off Captain, Chandamal who at the time was on just 6 (he went on to make 80) and Moeen spilling a similarly simple catch to Dananjaya. To rub salt in the wound the latter launched a mighty six facing his next delivery. Sri Lanka’s top four all made half centuries.
The wheels had come off England’s juggernaut.
And this ill-temper and cavalier approach was carried straight through into their batting.
Jason Roy, Alex Hayles and stand-in captain Jos Butler all falling to poor shots within the space of just ten balls. Root holed out shortly after leaving England with a paltry 28-4. With the exception of a brief moment of calm and control as Stokes and Moeen put on a consolatory 97, the whole day was one of calamity piled upon calamity ending in crushing defeat.
Morgan commented:
“Sri Lanka took advantage of us having a very poor day. Right from the get-go they played quite an aggressive approach and I don’t think at many stages we reacted to that well.”
And therein lies the glimmer of hope for opposing teams and next year’s ICC World Cup. Of course, the captain wasn’t on the field to steady the ship and to calm fraying tempers, and the line up was slightly different from the winning formula of previous matches, but it was Sri Lanka’s approach that took the initiative away from England. They batted the way England like to bat. Immediate impact, constant pressure on the bowlers, an eye on at least a run every ball. And England didn’t like it one bit.
Morgan tried to play down their humiliation by looking for stock positives in the post match interviews:
“It is not setback at all – we have got to learn from every game between now and the World Cup.”
But just as England must learn from every game between now and the World Cup, then so do all the other 9 teams and their analysts will have been poring over the video of this game wringing their hands with glee. Whether this is a one off blip or a real weakness remains to be seen, it’s clear that the only way other teams have a chance of piercing the ironclad confidence and record of this current England team is to fight fire with fire and go straight for the jugular.
Expat Sport’s Dan McTiernan examines what could potentially prove to be the mighty England’s ICC World Cup 2019 Achilles’ heel.
