7 min readBangaloreOct 27, 2023 07:56 AM IST
First published on: Oct 26, 2023 at 10:08 PM IST
Jos Buttler’s eyes traced the path of Pathum Nissanka’s six that sealed the game for Sri Lanka. Buttler could see the faint hopes of title-defense melt in the floodlit skies. He then turned impassively at his teammates, who exchanged frigid looks, before they shook hands with Nissanka and his onrushing teammates. Buttler and his men disappeared into the gallows of the dressing room with an air of mourning, too shocked perhaps to even weep.
Follow all the action from the Cricket World Cup 2023 on our special World Cup section. You can also find the latest stats, like the top scorer and the highest wicket-taker of the current edition, upcoming World Cup fixtures and the points table on the site.
The fall of the world champions needs all but a mathematical confirmation. But even the world of run-rate and equation offer them little consolation, for the defeat has been devastatingly perfect, with no scourge for even ifs and buts. It could perhaps be the most shattering title defence ever in a World Cup, one that arrived without a sense of foreboding. “I don’t think there is any realistic hope left,” Buttler would say in the press conference when asked about the slimmest hopes of qualifying for the semifinals. His face was sombre and dull, and he could not even muster half a forced smile.
Even if there looms a thin window of possibility, the door is shutting rudely on their face. After four spineless defeats, England are in no space to even dream of the unthinkable. To win the four remaining games—against India, Australia and Pakistan, besides the Netherlands—itself is a steep climb. And for other teams to cater to their script is merely wishful thinking. Buttler, maintaining clarity amidst the sorrow, captured England’s plight precisely. “We’re not just losing, we’re losing by a long way and playing a long way short of our best.”
The four matches they lost were all by massive margins—by eight wickets, 229 runs, 69 runs and nine wickets. There is nowhere to hide after such tame defeats. It’s a collective, wholesome failure.
Three weeks ago, they landed in India with high hopes. Defending champions in both white-ball formats, a well-equipped side, power in the batting, guile in bowling quality fielders, bounding with multitaskers, and vast depth of experience, they breathed an air of invulnerability on the paper. But since their opening game against New Zealand, the world champions have unravelled in dubious fashion. Suffice it to say that everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, or put it another way, nothing went right, from top to bottom.
The openers never got going. Dawid Malan, but for his hundred against Bangladesh, has looked cagey. Bowlers have exposed his fallibility out the off-stump, his tendency to get squared up even off the bowling of Angelo Mathews, no more than a trundler. His accomplice Jonny Bairstow was a shadow of his shadow, a Bairstow lookalike rather. In five scratchy innings, all he eked out was 127 runs. The names further down does not inspire any respite either. Joe Root: 175 runs in five innings; Jos Buttler 95 in five outings. Not even the miracle worker Ben Stokes could sprinkle magic and resurrect his team as he had several times in his career. In his only two games, he scratched and scraped to 81 runs. Even his own well of miracles has run dry. In a high-scoring tournament like this, all their batsmen extracted were a sole hundred and four half-centuries.
An under-firing batting firm is a definite recipe for disaster in the subcontinent. More so a batting order with so much ammo and experience. Bowling too looked rounded—they had a genuine quick in Mark Wood, white-ball virtuoso in David Willey, left-hand menace in Sam Curran, a cutter-exponent in Chris Woakes and two guileful spinners in Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali. Add variety in bowling and depth in batting, they looked a well-worn side. Perhaps not as formidable as to defend the title, but certainly sure-shot semifinalists.
But all they hoarded was 28 wickets in these games, that is less than six a match. The best economy rate a seamer could manage was 6.50. Wood’s strike rate was 70, Woakes 72. Buttler was at a loss to explain the reason for the capitulation. “That much is obvious – it’s never for a lack of effort, it’s never for a lack of hard work or preparation. Look around the room. It’s not a lack of talent,” he said, exasperation shining on his face.
Some champion teams arrive with their aura shattered and their crown already slipping. But not England. “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,” he said. And suddenly, shockingly, you end up losing games in a flurry.
Buttler kept returning to his stock words—frustrating and shocking.“It’s a shock to everyone. I’ll walk back in the dressing room after this and look at the players sitting 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,” he added, pausing for deep breaths in between.
He turned philosophical. “If there was one golden egg that we were missing, then you’d hope to see that. But there is no secret, I don’t think. There’s no one else who can score your own runs or take your own wickets. That comes from the start, from the captain at the front,”he said.
Buttler himself has looked ragged, far from the buoyant self with the bat. Like Bairstow, Buttler seemed someone else, a duplicate perhaps. “I’ve been a long way short of my best. As a leader, you want to lead through your own performance and I’ve not been able to do that,” he admitted.
Though Buttler stressed that the mind of his team is on winning the remaining games, unavoidable is a feeling that England would embark on a massive revamp, of spirit and personnel, as the tournament is done and dusted, as they did after the 2015 embarrassment. Buttler could have perhaps sensed the winds of changes howling when his eyes traced the Nissanka six that soared out of the stadium.
England's Ben Stokes walks after losing his wicket. (Reuters) 
Share
