“We are certainly keeping people interested,” mused Andrew Strauss, England’s then captain, midway through the group stage of the hulking great juggernaut that was the 2011 World Cup. Strauss was as baffled as the rest of us after his side had somehow defended 171 against South Africa in Chennai, four days after Ireland’s Kevin O’Brien had made mincemeat of England’s attack in Bangalore, which just a week earlier had been the scene of a heart-stopping 338-run-a-side tie with India.
Four years on and two games into the 2015 edition, it feels as if England are taking their supporters on less of a rollercoaster ride and more a Thelma and Louise-style drive to the canyon. Defeats to Australia and New Zealand, the latter even more harrowing to wake up to than the first, will to many simply continue the quadrennial tradition that sees our pyjama-clad positive-takers continue their record of being the only top-eight full–member nation to never win a 50-over ICC tournament.
And yet, all is not lost. They’re still in it. Because, as in 2011, three victories from six will secure passage to the quarter-final stage as cricket’s showpiece event spends a whole month – 42 games – whittling down 14 teams to eight in the gentlest way possible. So nullify the threat of Scotland on Monday, find a way past Bangladesh on 9 March and break the spirit of Afghanistan four days later – hey presto! – England will be just three more wins away from lifting the World Cup.
That England are still alive after two defeats from two is thanks, in the main, to the crushingly dull 2007 edition of the tournament in the Caribbean. Four quaint little groups of four were intended to give the associate nations a pat on the head, swiftly followed by a boot through the exit door so the proper cricket teams could make merry in a second group of eight.
When India followed Pakistan out of the tournament at the first hurdle, the big TV switch-off on the subcontinent turned the tournament into a financial disaster. “Never again” was the message from the Board of Control for Cricket in India as they tugged angrily on the strings of their marionettes at the ICC like never before.
The result was a tournament as we have it now. It’s not the one we will get in four years’ time, mind you. That will be a 10-team affair that looks set to guarantee every team – most importantly India – nine group matches. The final form it takes is yet to be announced. But back in the here and now, the fact that England are two defeats from two feels largely irrelevant. In fact, in many ways they appear no less likely to go all the way than before, given pre-tournament expectations.
England have, through a hokey cokey approach to selection, largely wasted 17 days of white-ball cricket this winter in the lead up to the World Cup. But it could yet prove by-the-by. Hitting the quarter-finals with momentum – the most overused, meaningless and yet in this type of competition applicable word – can still be achieved. The pressure now is to start some sort of upward trajectory in the output of their players. The head coach, Peter Moores, must somehow shake some form from his misfiring captain Eoin Morgan, reconsider the makeup of the top three (again) and remind the programmed and rather predictable bowling attack that they have done it before and retain the ability to think for themselves. And then, who knows?
As a sporting spectacle, it all would be rather unsatisfactory of course. As it was four years ago. When England made the quarter-finals last time, at the expense of two teams who had embarrassed them in the group stages in Ireland and Bangladesh, it all felt slightly awkward. And so the 10-wicket shellacking at the hands of Sri Lanka in Colombo that followed was, to the naturally masochistic England supporter, well deserved. A fluked World Cup win that featured defeats to those two along the way would only have felt as hollow as Spain’s triumph in the football equivalent a year earlier. They lost their opening game to Switzerland, after all.
