A crestfallen Joe Root admitted England blew a “golden chance” to convert two years of one-day progress into a trophy with their Champions Trophy semi-final defeat to Pakistan but insisted the disappointment must not see them alter from their current course.
Eoin Morgan, the captain, has long stated that the eight-team tournament was a staging post for the 2019 World Cup on home soil but the manner of their eight-wicket humbling in Cardiff, where they were bowled out for 211 on a used surface, has prompted questions over their ability to adapt to conditions beyond flat batting tracks and the pressure of knockout cricket.
Both Morgan and the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, led a team meeting after the defeat where they looked to reinforce the progress made since their harrowing World Cup exit to Bangladesh in 2015 to a dressing room still in shock. For Root, whose next assignment is captaining England for the first time in their Test series with South Africa on 6 July, the performance was tough to take.
“It was a golden chance for us to win something,” said Root, England’s top-scorer on the day with 46 before the collective rot set in. “All we can do now is keep looking towards that World Cup and use this as a really good platform. Morgs and the rest of the guys know that we’re not the finished article but we have made huge strides.
“We’ve got to continue to do that and we’ve got to work out ways where we can get on the right side of these results and in scenarios when things aren’t favourable to us. We’ve got to keep the same drive that we’ve had over the last 18 months so that when that World Cup does come round, we’re in the best shape possible to contend for that final.”
Morgan had publicly highlighted the advantage Pakistan had in returning to a slow, low pitch they had played on only 48 hours earlier but there has been no official complaint to the International Cricket Council, which allocated three pitches per ground and oversees the preparation, due to an acceptance they were thoroughly outplayed.
Bayliss, whose appointment in 2015 owed much to his track record with Sri Lanka and on the Australian white-ball scene, insisted England showed no signs of tightening up on the day and talked up his side’s batting as their strongest suit. But he also conceded a hard-hitting line-up that has become accustomed to racking up scores in excess of 300 is currently lacking in some street-smarts when the ball does not come on nicely.
With two years until their next shot at ending a run of 17 global 50-over tournaments without a trophy, Bayliss backed the current group to mature sufficiently in this regard but added it would be “remiss” not to consider widening the selection net.
He said: “We’ve come a long way in the last two years and like the fans we’d like to win every game but the simple fact is we are still an improving side.
“These guys are mostly 26 or 27 so they should be around for another five or six years. [But] if there is someone else who deserves to be in the team then we’ve got to look for that.”
Chances for the next best will come around in the Twenty20 series against South Africa that begins on Wednesday at the Rose Bowl near Southampton.
With a number of senior players rested there are five uncapped players in a 16-man squad that includes Lancashire’s power-hitting specialist Liam Livingstone and the Hampshire leg-spinner Mason Crane.
