The 2023 ICC Men's Cricket World Cup

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Addick Addict said:

Cafc43v3r said:

I get there are a hundred and one reasons what we didn't give ourselves a decent chance of winning this world cup but none of them explain this.

10 of those out there today are world cup winners, 6 of them have won two.  The last two.  

They look like they wouldn't beat a club side.

We thrashed New Zeland 6 weeks ago.

We drew that series 2-2 and we were on home soil too. These are totally different conditions.

Those players don't have to fight to get into the England team. There was no selection process as such or meaningful opportunities for others to stake a claim. An average of 5 ODIs in the last year as opposed to India's 15 per player. It was all based on historical performances. Even Root complained about not having enough ODIs but when you're not around for most of them you are only compounding the problem.

And guess how we've rewarded these players. By giving the likes of Bairstow a two year central contract. Once he is dropped we will have to bring in someone who isn't on one and who should have every right to feel hard done by given that he is replacing a player on £700,000  a year for not even playing.

That said, we've had little or the wrong gameplan. I've pointed out time and again how the better teams have preserved their wickets for the last 10 overs or so. It is absolutely hopeless trying to play Bazball and then ending up being all out in 25 overs. "Going hard" from the start only works on roads and we've played at five different grounds. One size really doesnt fit all and if you don't give yourself time to assess the wicket you are asking to be thrashed in four out of five games.

We have got what we deserved and I fear that our players knew they were out as early as before the last game. Four dead rubbers to play now but no doubt we will learn from those mistakes and people will shout "if only".

We won the series 3-1 winning the last 3 games by a combined 360 runs.

Yes different conditions but it's not like this is the first time any of our players have set foot in India.  New Zeland had pretty much the same preparation as us, did they spend all August playing domestic 50 over cricket?

There are loads of reasons the long term health of our 50 over team is in doubt. 

There are zero excuses for these performances.

NZ players have taken part, on average, in 20 ODIs in the previous 12 months as opposed to our 5. That is a 15 innings difference - and not just from the perspective of finding form and understanding the nuances of 50 over cricket but also as a guide to squad selection. We played 83 ODIs in the four year run to the 2019 WC. This time we played 42 with many of this squad unavailable for one reason or another. The Metro Bank was an alternative way of preparation that was utlised by England players in 2019 when it was The Royal Insurance. We shunned that too. And to say NZ didn't play in the Metro Bank is a wrong comparison for two reasons - one because NZ batsmen had batted on average that 15 extra times but the other is that I've never heard of a country not giving themselves the best chance to win a WC. It's like saying that we have the best facilities but let's go and train at some village club to level the playing field against some of the lesser countries who do not enjoy the quality of our facilities! And those England players did play in the Royal in 2019. If it was good enough then, it should have been good enough now.

Anyway, let's compare England's top six career in ODIs, in England and in India and then against the likes of NZ and SA in India:

England in England:

Malan           69.00
Bairstow       49.94
Root             46.37
Stokes          45.50
Buttler          42.83
Livingstone   33.63

Total            287.30 

England in India:

Malan           47.66
Bairstow       34.69
Root             47.00
Stokes          43.28
Buttler          14.83
Livingstone   18.80

Total             206.26

NZ in India:

Conway         57.71
Ravindra        72.50
Williamson     39.66
Mitchell          50.33
Phillips           27.66
Latham           50.08

Total              297.94

SA in India:

Bavuma           16.75
De Kock           60.30
Markram          44.12
V der Dussen   39.80
Klassen            60.85
Miller               41.12

Total               262.94
  
So our top six is 81 runs worse in India than in England and worse by 93 than NZ and by 57 than SA in India (had I used Hendricks instead of Bavuma then we would have been worse by 84). Buttler, from no small sample, has batted 14 times in ODIs in India, scoring 178 runs in total with a top score of 43 and as average of 14.83. That is appalling. And he is our captain. 

Forget about all the whataboutary and hindsight if you were the England captain/coach/selector would you not have picked Buttler for the world cup?  Honestly.

Of course I would but people are shocked that we are doing so badly in India and Buttler is one of the contributory factors. But I also said when he got the captaincy that I wouldn't have given it to him as I was worried about it affecting his keeping and hoping that his batting would still be strong. I had no idea how good a captain he was going to be because he had no pedigree whatsoever as a skipper. And his decision making at times here has been shocking. 

I asked without any whataboutary.

Buttler's captaincy, or lack of, isn't the reason arguably the best line and length bowler England have is missing his line and length by meters and England's best batsman doesn't look like he can score a run.

As @billysboots says you would pick at least 7 of 8 of the players England picked regardless of any 50 over form because they are undoubtedly our best players.

The big question now is do they throw the baby out with the bath water and give dad's army a chance for redemption in the t20 world cup or do we go all out for the next 50 over world cup.

Without looking it up I don't think anyone that played today is under 30.  Lack of understanding of the formate isn't an excuse.

You ask "without whataboutary" but then conveniently ignore the very reasons I put up as why we haven't turned up. You can't separate the two. You can't on the one hand say "who would you have picked instead of Bairstow", for example, when the provisional squad was based on players playing so few games - Bairstow (3), Root (4), Livingstone (4), Brook (6), Wood (2) who clearly haven't played enough games in that mode compared to Sharma (18), Gill (21), Kohli (19), Rahul (16)

So please allow me to ask you and @billyboots a question:

Do you think India playing 29 ODIs in the 12 months prior to the WC gave them clarity as to what their best squad was and also helped those players to find form? 

Are you honestly telling me that 10-15 ODIs in the last 18 months would have made Bairstow, Root, Butler, Woakes, Rashid and Wood, for example, play better now?

If so how?  They have played plenty of cricket in that time.  They are all in their 30s.  They can all bat/bowl to an incredibly high standard. 

Let's not go round in circles about Hundreds, Blasts, First Class cricket in August etc, we all know the long term effects they have.

We have at least 6 world class, multiple format, proven winners, that have turned up at a world cup and looked like complete mugs.

If we got to the semi final and Livingstone got a duck and went for a gallon I could say I told you so.  But that's not what happened.

You can call Buttler out, rightfully, but he was the captain last year when we won the T20 world cup.  In this format he has more time to get messages from the dressing room, especially with the number of sub fielders we have had to use.  

I am pretty sure he didn't tell Woakes, for example, to bowl like he did.

There is much, much, more to this than the Hundred.

Twice you accuse me of using "whataboutary" but then you don't answer the question I pose with a straight answer as to whether India benefitted from having 29 ODIs (not in 18 months) in 12 months! If you don't think that India have benefitted from that then what really was the purpose of them playing those? This is, after all, a nation where T20 is normally the be all and end all. In the previous 12 months to that they played just 15 ODIs so deliberately doubled their ODIs. Why would they do that if is wasn't to prepare for the WC? 

My whole point about utlising those 29 ODIs, in addition to getting used to the format and finding form, was that we based our selection on historical ODI data and T20. 20 over cricket is not the same as 50 over cricket in the sense that you can afford to lose three wickets in the first 10 overs in a T20 but you can't do so in an ODI. If you want one shining example of someone that is unproven batting time then there's Livingstone. This is someone who has only once, in any form of the game, batted for more than 50 balls in 140 innings dating back to June 2021!!! So what evidence was there that he could consistently do that in India especially batting at 6? Equally, Bairstow hasn't scored an ODI hundred in over two and a half years and hadn't played an ODI for 15 months prior to the NZ series when he averaged 13 in those four games. 

Now had we played 29 ODIs we might have been able to give a run to the likes of say Duckett and Crawley and they might have been able to find the sort of form that would have kept Bairstow out of the side. Equally, we might have been able to take more of a look at Jacks or someone else and found a better option that Livingstone. We might have found a better seam bowler than Woakes especially in Indian conditions. But we played 20 less ODIs than India and never gave ourselves the chance to do that. It became harder for any of us to pick the right squad because everything was based on what had been done in years gone by.  

You finally say that what I've said is "There is much, much, more to this than the Hundred". I didn't say that The Hundred was the sole cause of our dreadful performances here. I said that it was an opportunity for our internationals to play in the domestic 50 over competition but had we played 29 ODIs in the preceding 12 months then those players might not have needed to have done so. But they did neither. And that's not about "Bairstow, Root, Butler, Woakes, Rashid and Wood playing better now". It's about giving them the opportunity in the middle to find the form that made them brilliant ODI cricketers. And if they couldn't do so then we would have had enough evidence to find a replacement that might have done so.