New Delhi, October 16(Press Ki Taquat)
England will have to play some of their “best cricket” to come out of the hole they find themselves in following their shock defeat to Afghanistan in the ODI World Cup.
England suffered a 69-run defeat to the Hashmatullah Shahidi-led side with the defending champions faltering in their chase of the 285-run target at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Sunday.
The win was Afghanistan’s second-ever in a World Cup match and lifted them to sixth position on the points table behind England.
On whether it was premature to say that England’s World Cup defence was under threat, Jos Buttler, whose team is yet to face India, Australia and South Africa, said, “Yeah. As I mentioned just before, it’s not been the way we wanted to start the competition, but this is the situation we find ourselves in and we’re going to have to play some of our best cricket moving forward.”
The skipper said he had full faith in his team to pull through this crisis.
“Yeah, it’s a big setback obviously. Before the tournament starts you have a different idea of how the first three games would pan out. We’ve got to show a lot of character, a lot of resilience within the team and most of all a lot of belief. There were a lot of excellent players in there and we haven’t played well enough today but we must keep that belief,” said Buttler.
Afghanistan were helped on their way to their second-highest World Cup total by a fine 80-run innings from Rahmanullah Gurbaz at the start and a superb 28-run cameo by Mujeeb-ur-Rahman in the final overs.
Afghanistan didn’t lose a wicket till they had crossed the century mark. England, on the other hand, were 91/4 at one stage.
Asked if he could pinpoint where things started going wrong for England, Buttler said, “No, we didn’t, no we started poorly, first ball of the game I missed one and it sort of set the tone for that first 10 overs, we didn’t hit the areas that we wanted to and credit to Gurbaz (80 runs) as he put us under a lot of pressure, played some good shots, but maybe a few too many easy boundaries in there.”
England’s aggressive style of batting, called ‘Bazball’, has come to epitomise their cricket in all three formats, more so in Tests under coach Brendon McCullum.
“It’s a position you find yourselves in, it’s not the position you wanted to be in three games ago but the character is excellent as I’ve mentioned, there’ll always be belief and we’ll dust ourselves down and go again.”
England’s charismatic Test skipper Ben Stokes’s fitness has been a cause for concern as the all-rounder has not played in any of the three World Cup matches so far. He was seen doing sprints before the Afghanistan match but did not play. “He wasn’t fit for this game (against Afghanistan) but we’ll see how he pulls up for the next one,” said Buttler.
