England’s participation in the Champions Trophy is at an end, and they have been the worst team at the tournament, being the only side in either group not to record a single point. This post looks briefly at yesterday’s match and then at the problems with this England Men’s ODI side.

EXITING WITH A WHIMPER

England’s elimination was already confirmed before yesterday’s match began, but the question was whether they would depart with a bang or a whimper. Afghanistan were hoping for it to be an almighty bang, since a victory by 207 or more runs would push South Africa’s net run rate below Afghanistan and mean that the latter made the semi-finals. In the event England exited with the tamest of whimpers. The match started in familiar fashion, with Phil Salt (no 1 in the England batting order) and Jamie Smith (no 3) both departing cheaply, both to terrible shots. That once again brought Duckett and Root together with a rebuilding operation to perform. This time round we got an illustration of the fact that if you keep on needing rescue operations you don’t always get them – Duckett made 24 and Root 37, which would remain England’s top score. Brook, officially next in line for the captaincy vacated by Buttler, managed 19. Buttler, attempting to provide some stability, a role for which he is not well suited, managed 21 off 43 balls, while Jofra Archer ended up second top scorer with 25 off 31 balls, and the comparative ease with which he was able to bat was a damning indictment of his alleged betters in that department. All of this added up to 179 all out from 38.2 overs – a scoring rate of below five an over and 11.4 overs left unused. Marco Jansen took 3-39, and was outdone figures wise by Wiaan Mulder who had 3-25. No South African bowled badly, with Kagiso Rabada’s 1-42 from seven overs being the worst figures of any of their five bowlers. Rassie van der Dussen, 72 not out off 87 balls, and Henrich Klaasen, 64 off 56 balls before perishing in the moment of victory were the chief performers responsible for making England’s total look as pathetic as it was, South Africa winning by seven wickets with 20.5 overs to spare – in other words they had more than the length of a T20 innings to spare.

ENGLAND’S PROBLEMS

England personnel wise (for the moment we will ignore questions of the domestic schedule) have four main issues, of which only the first is definitely being dealt with:

1. They have the wrong captain. Buttler has stepped down, which starts to address this, but my own feeling is that they need to do something more radical than merely turn to ‘next cab in the rank’ Brook. Perhaps Liam Dawson, who playing skills would help to address other problems could be brought straight in as captain.
2. Numbers one and three in the order need replacing. You cannot expect to win matches when losing two early wickets on an absolutely regular basis, and the dismissals of Salt and Smith against South Africa suggest that neither learned anything from their failures in the first two matches.
3. Lack of all rounders. This, with five bowlers required to be used in every innings, creates issues of balance – you either pick five proper bowlers, relying on the top six to do the bulk of the scoring, or you pick four front line bowlers only and rely on part timers to bowl the fifth allocation of ten overs. England have opted for the latter approach, and their lack of either depth or variety in the bowling department has cost them at this tournament, which leads to…
4. Too much similarity in bowling. England have not a left armer of any type at this tournament (look up the bowling half of the package offered by Dawson the player), the fast bowlers used have all been very similar, making it easy for opposing batters to take them on. The one trustworthy component of the England bowling attack at this tournament, Adil Rashid, is now 37 years old, and the endurance of James Anderson notwithstanding probably has a fairly limited remaining shelf life at the top level.

England have not been struggling in ODIs for nearly as long as they had been when they crashed out of the 2015 World Cup, but a reset of a similar type to the one that took place then is required.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off (with a reminder as we start a new month that images can be viewed at a larger size by clicking on them)…