The All New World Cup 2023 Thread.

[sussexpob]

Perera goes in Willey's first over.... a couple more quickly, and maybe England can exert some pressure onto SL... not counting on it

[Arthur Crabtree]

All I can say is, I wouldn't want to be caught in the deep whistling on camera, because the post-tournament mandatory investigation won't look fondly on that

Arf!

[sussexpob]

Willey has a second...23/2....

[Arthur Crabtree]

Only factor that can stop SL is boredom.

[sussexpob]

I wonder where today's trash performance and tournament elimination falls in the grand scale of England's previous world cup efforts.

For some reason the 1999 WC always sticks out as a failure, as for some reason people thought being at home would somehow make up for having the worlds most trash side. 2015 takes some beating, simply on the basis that Moores rambling on about data added considerable sham factor. 2003 we were rubbish, but can always cling to the fact the forfeit in Harare maybe knocked us out. 2007 makes a case solely on the basis we picked as side that seemed to confuse the competition for a "how long you can block" event..... but then Freddie armed with two bottles of rum, trying to pedalo his way home across the Atlantic Ocean leaves too many fond memories.

World Champions being knocked out with 3 games to play, losing to Afghanistan, and giving up their biggest ever score in ODIs .... hard to beat that. Really hard to beat

[Durhamfootman]

It feels as though Bangladesh and Netherlands might be the only teams that England are capable of beating.

expect English domestic cricket to be turned on its head again, as part of the fallout.... doubtless the guardians of the game will decide that there is too much championship cricket and not enough of the Hundred. Maybe they'll switch back to divisions of 9 so that they can get away with only playing 8 games a season in April/May ahead of the test series and then spend June to Sept playing 50 over white ball, 20 over white ball and 16 and a bit over white ball. After all, you can never have too much white ball cricket

[sussexpob]

Chased it down with a mere 25 overs and 8 wickets to spare....

What a calamity.

[mikesiva]

Sri Lanka 160-2

Nissanka 77*
Sadeera 65*

[bigfluffylemon]

I agree sussex, this is looking like the worst wirld cup debacle in a sidecwith a long historyvof them. Poor preparation has ibviously been a dactor, but these are you proven world class players. How every single one of them has completely failed to perform is beyond me. The defeats have been utter thrashings, not even at the races.

Only Topley comes out with any credit, and he's already gone home.

Mott has to go, and Buttler sacked as captain. For a start.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Well, no Morgs...

[bigfluffylemon]

The excuse that England don't play enough ODIs doesn't really seem to hold water when you dig into it.

Apart from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, every other side at the tournament has played a comparable number since the end of the last world cup and the start of this:
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... ;type=team

In terms of W/L record in that time England are slightly below the middle of the pack, but there isn't a great deal in it between New Zealand in 3rd and Australia in 8th
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... ;type=team

(Pakistan have a great W/L record in the time, but they've played three quarters of their matches at home and a substantial number v Netherlands, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan)

So other sides haven't played much more than we have, or won much more than we have in preparation. We should at least be competitive, not being thrashed every game.

[alfie]

I agree sussex, this is looking like the worst wirld cup debacle in a sidecwith a long historyvof them. Poor preparation has ibviously been a dactor, but these are you proven world class players. How every single one of them has completely failed to perform is beyond me. The defeats have been utter thrashings, not even at the races.

Only Topley comes out with any credit, and he's already gone home.

Mott has to go, and Buttler sacked as captain. For a start.

Steady on , bfl : I'm not sacking anyone in the middle of a competition (even when the team is dead in the water). I agree the leadership team will come under scrutiny when all is done ; and suspect it won't survive in its present form - but I am opposed to a football style "sack the lot !" response to serious reverses. Once this is finished there obviously needs to be a proper look at what went wrong and why. And with a t20 WC coming up next year some decisions are going to have to be made. Going to depend partly on what some of the older players even want to do , as well as the alternatives on offer.
My own hunch is Buttler will continue in charge for now (because who else ?) unless he wants out. But I do suspect he might need a different off-field manager. Morgan perhaps ? Will wait and see.

Four games left anyway. Personal pride as well as future prospects at stake for players too. Can't say I'm altogether looking forward to them but do still hope for a bit of an effort to finish this better than the rubbish they've dished up so far...

[alfie]

As for why the team has fallen apart like this , I have no more idea than poor old Jos - who was looking like a man who has just been punched silly in a boxing ring when trying to make sense of things in the post-game interview. TBH I had no great expectations for England at this WC : I didn't rate the bowling for the likely conditions , and wasn't sure the batsmen would be able to make enough runs to compensate. But I didn't expect this debacle.

I do think it is largely (a) dramatic loss of confidence following the NZ carve up in game one (b) muddled thinking around batting/bowling tactics which has players not really committed one way or the other : so indeed a lot of the responsibility probably does come back to team management. I could be wrong of course ; but it seems unlikely that all these players have suddenly gone from being really good limited over players to total no hopers overnight.

Tactics have frequently been poor. Bowling first against SA was daft. And in this game it should have been clear fairly early that this wasn't a 380 pitch (Sri Lanka coasted home but that was largely because England completely gave up after a dozen or so overs and stopped trying to exert any pressure). After losing the first couple of wickets it was time to throttle back and aim for a more modest total but nobody seemed to realise this. Stokes was initially struggling to get going - which isn't unusual. But Jonny should have continued to do what he was , knocking around safe singles , while they settled things down . 100 after twenty overs ? Who cares - plenty of time left. But he got anxious and mistimed one that didn't come on ... wasteful. Then Jos comes in and instead of taking time to play himself in (knowing what he can do in the later overs) treats it like a t20 and gone for single figures...These fellows have tons of experience : why aren't they thinking straight ?
I missed the rest of the innings (mercifully) but seems like the rest followed in similar vein. Deep batting order ? I don't really rate Livingstone but would have hoped Moeen and Woakes could have hung around with Stokes to scratch out some sort of score. But I fear England had this "300 or bust" plan and were not prepared to abandon the fantasy ...

But I'm probably totally guessing. Will await a better explanation of this extraordinary fall from grace.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Not a great start for Pakistan v SA. There's a fair chance only one Asian side will get to the semis.

[sussexpob]

I do agree with both of you in regards to the failure points highlighted, but I also think in my opinion that none of these provide an obvious "smoking gun" conclusion, so trying to elevate any of the causes into "the reason" for our failure seems a little artificial. In truth, it feels like England are representing a reverse "margin gains" type methodology, where bad or muddled decisions on a host of little things manifests itself as giant canyon's in performance when added up.

I start with the coach - The coach cannot be a terrible coach, he won the T20I tournament in 2020. And we have to acknowledge with so little ODI cricket being played nowadays, how much time does Mott actually spend working with his team to address some of these issues? I very much doubt he has anytime at all to work with the players on a technical level. This is where I think the splitting of the coaching role between formats is not particularly helpful, because it goes without saying that the limited overs teams usually bolted onto long test match series always means the test coach is doing everything in terms of technical development, and the rest is an after-thought.

I guess that goes hand and hand with tactics. Alife suggests we are not sensible in our batting approach, but how much is this a bleeding of styles from the test team, who approach test matches now like they are T20s at some points? It has to have some impact in how players play? I don't personally agree with the tactics argument though, because I didnt see Maxwell or Klaasen doing anything but swing the bats in the last week. For me the tactics worked, we won the last world cup with an uber aggressive side, and had dominated ODI for a long period with the same approach. So for batting, its purely execution for me. Our players seem technically inferior in their hitting to others.

One of my main concerns is the team composition and bowling tactics. We are continually picking players who do not take wickets in the ODI game - Rashid, Moeen, Wood, Atkinson (in LO domestic).... look at their wicket averages? Horrific in recent times. Without a reliable wicket taking threat, teams can simply ride out long periods and setup for the slog finish. For the batters, its been a case of sticking as much with the status quo, and the batting "risk" we took coming into the tournament was to pick a batter who can't average over 25 in domestic cricket. We have had a few players come in after the last world cup and did well, so this picking of Brook made no sense over other options.

But again, is this Mott? Can we blame him? In the end, he has no domestic tournament of worth to produce the next in line.... we play so few ODIs that there aren't a great deal of opportunities to bleed new talent, and when we do get series like the Ireland one, its hardly indicative or persuasive when someone does well... so it feels like a very difficult situation.