KOLKATA: World Cup 2023 is done and dusted, so what now for England? Maybe some soul-searching. Some introspection on not quite giving enough attention to the 50-over game.
Despite England being World Cup winners in 2019. Statistics show England gave a lot more importance to Test cricket than to ODIs in the four years between the two World Cups. They played just 42 ODIs during this period. Compare that with the 88 that they played between 2015 and 2019 World Cups and the difference is there for everyone to see.
Yet, were they really as bad as a team that was trying to keep the wooden spoon away for a substantial part of the tournament? Surely not, particularly with players like Jos Buttler, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow, Mark Wood, Sam Curran, Adil Rashid at their disposal. As Root has indicated, they themselves are searching for answers to their dismal show. In fact, that would have been the dressing room discussion after each failure that they had to absorb in the tournament.
Between 2019 and 2023, England played 56 Test matches, which, as Root admitted, "was a huge amount compared to other nations". Clearly, the focus has been on Tests at the cost of ODIs and they paid the price here.
Now comes the tough part - rebuilding a side that is down in the dumps. The guns will be trained on the coach-captain pair of Mathew Mott and Buttler. Eoin Morgan, who led England to the 2019 triumph, insists that there is no need to change the combination now. He has also brushed aside suggestions that he should take over as the coach.
As the England cricket board goes into post-mortem mode, Buttler might survive the cut. Just one bad tournament surely cannot wash away all the good that he has done so far. However, quite a few of his teammates might fade into the horizon.
As England prepare to reboot and rebuild, some important changes are inevitable.
