England’s Woeful Title Defense: Decoded
Battered, bruised, and defeated, England finished their 2023 World Cup campaign with one of the worst title defenses in sports history. 3 wins, 2 of them coming against 10th and 8th place, with the 3rd coming against a deflated Pakistan team, playing for virtually nothing but pride. Apart from that, England constantly collapsed, failed to chase 4 times out of 4, and struggled to take wickets in important moments, most notably with the new ball. However, their problems started way before the 5th of October, so let’s delve into the real issues behind this miserable performance.
From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows…
For the first time in 44 years, England finally got their hands on the ODI World Cup after a complete overhaul and investment into the side. However, once they'd achieved their goal, they decided to shift ODI’s to the backburners and focus on the test squad. Whilst this may sound reasonable, considering the horrendous form of the test team at the time, England completely neglecting the 50-over format creates 2 problems.
First of all, the format is slowly becoming obsolete, and by placing less importance on it, the ECB has helped to catalyse the slow demise of the longest white ball format. England have played 42 ODI’s between the 2 World Cups and have debuted 22 players. Comparatively, Australia has debuted 16 new names and New Zealand has brought in 18 new players in the same period. This shows that England has moved away from their formula which had worked for them in 2019. Instead, they chose to grow their squad, which is not necessarily a bad problem, but it has meant it has been harder to keep their success rolling and on top of that, it has undermined the importance of the format for some players as they may lose their spot regardless of performance.
The second problem is that most of their World Cup squad are not featuring in ODI’s regularly enough. Root has played in 19 of their 42 ODIs since 2019, Stokes — 13, Woakes — 15, Rashid/Buttler — 27, and Bairstow/Curran — 24. How can you expect a team to win the biggest tournament in the sport without the players constantly playing it? The format is practically non-existent at the domestic level in England so even the up-and-coming players like Brook and Atkinson are not playing the format enough to debut in a World Cup. However, my biggest problem with this all is that they are giving players, such as Phil Salt (16 ODI’s) and Sam Billings (13 ODI’s), opportunities, knowing that they are going to revert to their older players anyway. In a format slowly becoming obsolete, younger players are having their confidence ruined and their willingness to play depleted as good performances are overlooked to pick their ‘stalwarts’ from 4 years ago. Liam Livingstone has played in 16 of England’s ODI’s since 2019, scoring 436 runs at a strike rate of 117. Considering his role in the squad as a finisher, these numbers aren’t too impressive. On the other hand, Salt has scored 549 runs at a strike rate of 132. These players like Salt and Billings are training hard and performing well so that they can get picked for the big stage, but instead, England opt for Livingstone, who averages 18 in 8 ODI innings in India.
Selection
29 innings
890 runs
An average of 31.79
A strike rate of 98.99
3 fifties and 3 hundreds
Highest score of 132
These are Jason Roy’s numbers over the past 4 years that the England selectors would have you believe are worse than Livingstone’s. Not that I have anything against Livingstone, but Roy averages 38.26 more runs than him per innings in India at a much higher strike rate… as an opener. His omission from the squad is one of the most puzzling we've seen and it's shown at the World Cup. England lost 16 wickets in the powerplay compared to just 10 in 2019. Malan averages 69.42 when batting at 3/4 in ODI’s but as an opener, he averages 50.74. Whilst both numbers are incredible, it makes no sense to force him to play him at a position where he doesn't necessarily bat as well, just to accommodate Liam Livingstone, especially when you have an all-time great of the format, an in-form Jason Roy, waiting in the wings.
Another peculiar case of selection was Ben Stokes, who only 394 days after announcing his retirement, completed a U-turn on that decision, despite a summer of ruling one out. Again, this sets a completely wrong precedent, especially for the younger players like Harry Brook, who in his 23 months as an English cricketer, has scored 1967 runs in all formats. Despite a late decision to include him in the squad, Brook was dropped after just 3 games for Stokes, even though he was averaging 37 and top-scored in the loss to Afghanistan. England had dug themselves into a hole and Harry Brook suffered as a result. Stokes ended up scoring 48 runs in his first 3 innings, including one of the worst innings of his life against India, however, he ended the World Cup with 3 outstanding but unavailing knocks (64, 108, and 84), as England tumbled out of the competition.
The Proof is in the Pudding
On top of the issues surrounding Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, and the form of stars like Joe Root and Chris Woakes, the news of England’s central contracts came out around the start of the tournament, stirring up more problems for the squad. None more prolific than David Willey, who announced his retirement on the 1st of November after being the only player out of the 15 in India not offered a central contract. Considering he was England’s 2nd highest ODI wicket-taker (behind Rashid) between the 2 World Cups, this miss is mind-boggling.
Despite all of these issues off-field, England still came into the tournament as one of the favorites, coming off the back of an emphatic 3–1 series win over New Zealand at home. Nevertheless, England had the chance to silence their doubters against the very team they had destroyed at home just 22 days earlier…
The result was not necessarily surprising but the manner that it came in certainly came as a shock to all those in the England camp. Malan’s issues against the new ball were exemplified after he flirted with one outside off. It was now clear from the outset that England could no longer play the attacking style of cricket that had won them the trophy 4 years earlier. Root played a controlled 77 off 86 but due to no one else building around him, when the middle order came in to finish off the innings, there was nowhere near enough of a platform to do so. England completely miscalculated their innings and ended up scraping 282.
England took a wicket after just 7 balls, removing Will Young for a golden duck, but Ravindra and Conway went on to bat like it was a different pitch than England batted on, scoring 123* (96) and 152* (121) respectively. It was an eye-opening loss for England, however, this quote from Jos Buttler summed up the mindset that they had to adopt moving forward:
“It’s still one loss in a long tournament”
Buttler’s words were brought to fruition after an absolute battering of Bangladesh by 137 runs. Despite Malan’s swashbuckling 140 (107), England’s batting still looked shaky, as 281 of England’s 364 runs came from their top 3 and extras. This showed England’s reliance on their top 3, something that wasn't there in 2019. Regardless of the problems with the bat, the bowling unit turned up, with each of their 6 bowlers taking wickets, the highlight being Reece Topley (10–1–43–4). Things were looking up for England and they had surely turned their form around, right?
5. Straight. Losses.
The defending champions found themselves bottom of the table, 1 win from 7, having been bowled out 5 games in a row whilst only taking 38 out of a possible 50 wickets. The injury of Reece Topley was a big loss for them, but that wasn’t the biggest of their worries. Stokes was averaging 28 since his return, Wood had 5 wickets at an average of 64 in their 6 losses, and their captain, Jos Buttler, had scored 43 runs in their last 5 matches, and yet again, none of these were the biggest of their worries…
Spin. They couldn’t bowl it or bat against it. Across these 5 losses, 13 of the 38 wickets they took came from their spinners (9 coming from Rashid). Once again the selection of Livingstone as an all-rounder had us scratching our heads as he only bowled 23 overs in these 5 games, yet he was picked over Roy due to his bowling abilities. England lost 16 wickets to spin at an average of 15.69. Again, batting against spin and bowling spin had become the talk of English cricket. For years it has been neglected in the domestic system and now it has come back to bite them. Back in 2019, the ECB punished Somerset for producing pitches that spun too much. Bearing in mind that Somerset had 2 of England’s most promising spinners at the time, Jack Leach and Dom Bess, the decision to dock them points for making pitches that turned, seemed illogical as the point of the county system is to produce players for the England squad.
What’s Next?
England managed to band together for the final 2 games of the tournament and get 2 futile wins on the board against the Netherlands and Pakistan. Against Pakistan, they finally got the pacing of their innings right, with their top 6 all having somewhat fruitful innings. However, it was too little, too late. England found the correct formula too late and now they look ahead towards a long 4 years. Apart from Stokes and Willey, it is impossible to say who will not be a part of the England ODI setup moving forward but the squad released for the upcoming West Indies tour gives us some indication:
Jos Buttler (captain), Rehan Ahmed, Gus Atkinson, Harry Brook, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Sam Curran, Ben Duckett, Tom Hartley, Will Jacks, Liam Livingstone, Ollie Pope, Phil Salt, Josh Tongue, John Turner
Jason Roy has once again been left out so perhaps England are looking to move on completely from him and Bairstow in the one-day format. There are plenty of candidates to open the batting in the squad, most notably the two test openers, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett. Considering the Bazball style of cricket they have adopted and championed in the longest format, it makes sense for them to feature in a format that will suit their tempo.
Buttler remains as captain, which was expected as he did bring home the T20 World Cup just over a year ago. However, Joe Root and Dawid Malan do not appear in the squad. Root’s exclusion is most likely due to load management, however, Malan’s omission is perhaps more likely a sign of the future. With Duckett, Crawley, Pope, Salt, Jacks, and Brook all featuring in the squad as well as Hain and Vince waiting in the wings, Malan’s time in the one-day format may be drawing to a close. By the time the series ends, Malan will be 36, so he is most likely not in England’s plans for the 2027 World Cup in South Africa. For me, England has to do the reverse of what they’ve spent the last 4 years doing in ODIs, as they must now build a squad of 15 guys who they can trust to go and win the World Cup in 4 years.
In my opinion, that squad may look something like this:
- Jos Buttler (captain)
- Zak Crawley
- Ben Duckett
- Joe Root
- Will Jacks
- Phil Salt
- Harry Brook
- Sam Curran
- Liam Livingstone
- Brydon Carse
- Rehan Ahmed
- Gus Atkinson
- Reece Topley
- Jofra Archer
- Tom Hartley
