Cricket World Cup: Why England will be ‘hurt by ‘missed opportunity’ and likely early exit in India | Cricket News

Former World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan looks at the impact of England’s latest World Cup defeat on the dressing room, what the loss against India does to their tournament hopes and what an early exit from the tournament could mean for the legacy of Jos Buttler’s side…

They’re an incredibly proud bunch of cricketers that love playing cricket for their country and never take it for granted, regardless of how well or how badly that they’ve played, but this hurts and it should hurt.

They’ve lost another low-scoring game and again they’ve not competed for 100 overs of a game. They’ve won one game since they’ve arrived here which is unbelievable.

If you had told me that on the flight over, that England would be sitting bottom of the tournament at this stage, I’d have laughed in your face. With this quality of personnel, it’s hard to take. In that changing room it will be as flat, I would say, an England changing room as I’ve ever been in.

That probably was at its lowest in Adelaide in 2015, when we were knocked out by Bangladesh, but there was a different level of expectation in that changing room. You were only expected to qualify for the quarter-final and you weren’t expected to compete for silverware.

England came here with a level of expectation in the changing room, not just in the public, that they wanted to win this tournament. The next one is in 2027 and where probably eight or nine of these guys will not be here.

They will be too old or they’ll be doing various different other things, with the majority of them retired. In English white-ball cricket there will be a huge sense of a missed opportunity, because the quality in that changing room is hard to come by.

Positives for England?

There’s nothing better than embodying a message on the big stage against one of the best sides in the tournament. They haven’t managed to do it for the whole game today, but there’ll be pockets of the game today that they have definitely made improvements on.

On previous games, the new ball bowling was brilliant. Adil Rashid coming in and bowling as well as he did was brilliant, but the batting is one thing for me that still baffles me. When you sit back, nobody has an answer in the change room and we can’t explain it.

“You always compare things across formats. It has to be the intangible stuff, the feelings, the emotions and the preparation in the mindset has to change. It has to change in accordance and to be tailored for that changing room, so maybe to take a leaf out of Brendon McCullum’s book!

Nasser: Did England get decisions right?

England sit bottom of the 10-team table with just win in from six matches, with former captain Nasser Hussain questioning how they have started so poorly and whether they tackled their run chase against India correctly.

“When I look at that table, it reminds me of the very first thing Duncan Fletcher said to me when I took over as captain,” Hussain told Sky Sports. “He said, ‘you’re not the best side in the world, but you ain’t the worst side in the world either’, which is what we were.

“I think India at home were always going to be difficult to beat, but they shouldn’t be at the bottom of that table. How have a side that has Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root and Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler and Mark Wood and Adil Rashid and all the talent in that dressing room ended up in that position?

“I think it’s just a slow sort of effect that’s just taken over. First game they lose and then they make bad decisions. They win a game, but then they make bad decisions for the next game. Then they double down on those bad decisions and make even worse decisions regarding the team.

“Confidence just implodes on you and then you come here, which was going to be the biggest test,” Hussain added. “India at home, big crowd. For me the key today was that I knew pretty much how the game was going to go before it had even started.

“The toss was a 50-50 decision and it was going to be hard to bat first on that pitch, because it was tired, it was slow and it was going to turn. Then it was going to nip a bit, then the dew was going to come down and it was going to skid on and not turn.

“The difficult period for England was that little five to 10-over period under lights, like I saw in the South Africa verses Australia game. For me, being old school, old fashioned, that is the period where you grind it out and you survive. They are the difficult periods you get in any format of the game.

“I was on commentary with Eoin Morgan when Ben Stokes was batting and I said, ‘what would you do?’ He said ‘I’d belt the ball into the outfield and get it wet’. That’s what Stokes tried to do. I would still say very rarely does Ben Stokes get it wrong, but I’m not sure he quite got it right in that situation.”

What’s next?

Monday’s game at the Cricket World Cup sees Afghanistan take on Sri Lanka in Pune. Both sides have four points from five matches (two wins, three losses) with Sri Lanka ahead of Afghanistan on net run-rate.

Sri Lanka beat England by eight wickets in their previous fixture, while Afghanistan defeated Pakistan by the same margin. England are next in action on Saturday, when they face Australia (8am on Sky Sports Cricket, 8.30am start).

Watch every game from the Cricket World Cup live on Sky Sports between now and the final on Sunday November 19 – or stream without a contract through NOW.