England’s Mumbai meltdown shows their tactics were stuck in the past،
Jos Buttler sat alone in the row of seats outside the England dressing room, above the visual screen at the south end of the Wankhede Stadium. He wore the steady gaze of a man who knew that, even though his team is mathematically still alive in this World Cup, there is surely no turning back.
As Buttler reflected on what had gone before, Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson had a swing, smashing 70 in 5.3 overs. But even that partnership was not enough to save England from the ignominy of their biggest ever defeat in men’s ODIs – that too on a night they had earmarked as the match that would upset their Cup of the world.
It was their third loss of four in this tournament, and all three stung. They were swept aside by New Zealand in Ahmedabad and dealt with by Afghanistan in Delhi, but it was a total collapse in Mumbai. South Africa didn’t just beat world champions England: they made them look like a broken team.
It had the meaning of the evening when England’s title defense collapsed. They have pinned their hopes on the core of players who have supported their white-ball revolution and their rise from players also to double world champions; collectively, they just didn’t perform.
There was a short spell towards the end of the South African innings in which England exercised a brief sense of control. After 41 overs, South Africa were 264 for 5 and had not scored a boundary for 29 balls; Marco Jansen, their number 7, made 11 off 19. “We might have looked like we were restricting them to 340 or 350,” Buttler mused.
Instead, they made 399. Heinrich Klaasen’s shots were as clean as they were crisp as he powered his way to a 61-ball hundred, while Jansen hit 64 off his last 23 balls. “It got out of hand,” said Matthew Mott, the England coach. “We were under siege for a while: Jos was looking around to see who was fit to bowl.”
England were simply exhausted, and it wasn’t for lack of basic fitness. “It felt a little bit like a war zone at times,” Mott said. The problem stemmed from Buttler’s choice to bowl first when he won the toss, a decision he explained by saying: “[This is] usually a good hunting ground, so that’s the reason behind it.”
But as with many of England’s decisions at this World Cup, the explanation rested more on the past than the present and future. England took to the field at 2 p.m., when the Mumbai heat and humidity were at their most oppressive. It was a simple recipe for disaster: 11 English, left in the pan for four hours until fried to a crisp.
Evidence supporting Buttler’s claim was scant. Chase teams had a winning record of 75% in men’s ODIs at Wankhede over the last decade, but the sample size was four matches. There is a strong tendency to chase in the IPL, but the physical demands of 90 minutes on the field in the evening hardly compare to a full afternoon under the blazing sun.
And if England were once a chasing team, they are no longer that team. It was their seventh defeat in their last eight completed ODI chases; the only target they managed to achieve was 210 on a turning pitch at Mirpur. England used to scoff at scoreboard pressure; now it inhibits them.
The conditions were brutal, especially for an XI which had only three players under 32. There was a revolving door of players coming in and out of the field due to cramps, cramps or illness, to change sweat-soaked jerseys or to change jerseys. just for a moment of respite. English medical staff have become the busiest men in Mumbai.
Reece Topley was hit on his index finger during his fourth over, a suspected fracture that looks likely to rule him out of the tournament. Adil Rashid suffered from a stomach ache, which left him doubled over on the border. If it could have gone badly for England, it did.
David Willey, one of the fittest men in their squad, last month described himself as England’s “donkey” because of his workaholic qualities; early in his ninth over he was so cramped that he had to abandon his momentum, before sending down a waist-high no-ball which Klaasen clipped for six.
And just 90 minutes after leaving the field, Willey was back in the middle. Four days after Mott insisted England would not make “radical changes”, they made three: Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone and Chris Woakes were replaced by Willey, Gus Atkinson and Ben Stokes.
This forced them to rely on their front six to score the bulk of their points, instead they managed 55 between them. Chasing the 400, England “needed everything to go perfectly”, in Buttler’s words. Nothing did: the match was over after the first ball of the sixth over, when Marco Jansen had Dawid Malan strangled down the leg side to leave them 24 for 3.
England have not been officially eliminated from this World Cup, but the manner of their defeat was so painful that it is difficult to see how they could turn things around. They talked a good game in Mumbai this week but, as they prepare to face Sri Lanka in Bangalore on Thursday, the same message will have little effect.
Teams will likely need six wins from nine in the group stage to reach the semi-finals: England will need five in a row to reach that point, and don’t seem to know where even ‘only one. “We will keep this belief,” Buttler insisted, but few people outside their dressing room will join them – and those doubts must seep inside.
