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Peter Hayter asks some intriguing questions of England’s mindset before, during and after their Champions Trophy semi-final flop…
On the eve of their ICC Champions Trophy semi-final against Pakistan in Cardiff, England skipper Eoin Morgan chose a form of words to sum up the challenge facing them that would have alerted all with even a passing knowledge of sports trick-cyclery to the possibility that he and his team were there for the taking.
“I hope,” said the Irishman, “we’ve not played our best cricket yet.”
Not, you’ll note: “We’ve not played our best cricket yet,” but “I hope…”
There were other clues as to their mindset as well, for England’s supporters, they didn’t bode well, either, and they were all about the pitch.
England and Morgan always knew that if they progressed into the semi-finals they would be playing one of their matches on a used surface.
They also knew that if that used surface was in Cardiff it would be dry and low and slow and offer the chance of reverse swing.
They knew all that, yet what Morgan said about the prospect indicated they might be about to psych themselves out of the tournament.
“We’re comfortable with a used wicket,” he claimed. “We’ve come up against it before. I think the wicket that we played on against New Zealand here (when they scored 310 and won by 87 runs) was as good as a used pitch. The grass was shaved off and it was quite challenging.”
But as for what he would do should he win the toss, well that, apparently, was anyone’s guess.
“I’d rather lose the toss, I think,” he said. “I’m not sure, honestly, not sure what to do. We’ll have to turn up and see.”
Sadly for those whose hopes of England finally winning a global 50-over tournament had been raised by their barnstorming performances against Bangladesh, the Kiwis and Australia, not to mention their pre-event series victory over South Africa, the world’s No.1-ranked ODI team, turn up was exactly what they failed to do.
But why?
What turned a side judged by many the best on show, used to making scores of 300-plus for fun, featuring batsmen whose aggression, confidence and sheer ebullience had thrilled their supporters and enabled them to live up to the fate-tempting assertion from Sam Billings that they “petrified” opponents, into a stumbling, hesitant shambles when it really mattered?
No prizes for guessing Morgan’s idea of the answer to why they managed just 211, a score Pakistan knocked off for two wickets with 77 balls to spare.
“Coming from Edgbaston, it (the pitch) was obviously a big jump in pace and bounce and too much of an ask for us to adjust to. It brought Pakistan’s game closer to their home. So it was a big challenge and one too far for us.”
For it was not merely before and after the match that Morgan and his team subconsciously or otherwise felt they were playing against Pakistan and the pitch, but during it as well.
According to former England captain Mike Atherton, writing in The Times: “Perhaps the statistic that most summed up the day was the absence of a single six hit by a home batsman. In the past two years England have been market leaders in blazing sixes, but yesterday, on a ground that needs special dispensation because one of the boundaries is smaller than the regulations allow, not one six came.”
Just as telling from where I sat, however, was that Pakistan’s bowlers, excellent though they were, sent down 157 dot balls in England’s innings out of 304 deliveries (including extra balls for wides and no-balls) meaning Morgan’s team failed to score from more than half the balls they faced.
That means England’s batsmen allowed the Pakistan attack to bowl the equivalent of 26 maidens and one dot ball for luck.
Even allowing for the eight from which wickets were taken, surely not all of the remainder of the 157 run-less deliveries were impossible to score from? Forget the crash-bang-wallop, where, was the rotation of the strike the circumstances demanded?
Unsurprisingly, the strike rates of England’s top seven batsmen were well below par.
Only Alex Hales hit the run-a-ball target with his 13, the rest read as follows: Jonny Bairstow 43 @ 75.44, Joe Root 46 @ 82.14, Morgan 46 @ 62.26, Ben Stokes 34 @ 53.13, Jos Buttler 4 @ 57.14 and Moeen Ali 11 @ 78.57. Their overall run-rate was a meagre 4.26, the strike rate 70.56.
All of which supports the theory that, no matter how brilliantly their opponents carried out their plans, England lost the match as much because they lost the courage of their convictions.
Granted, Pakistan produced a master-class of how to bowl in the conditions, finding enough reverse swing to wrong foot batsmen who, until this point had hardly faced any of the conventional type either, and, tapping into coach Mickey Arthur’s tactical planning acumen, were superbly led by their fantastic captain Sarfraz Ahmed.
Granted, the pressure they built by taking wickets meant England’s attempts to get up a head of steam were regularly disrupted.
That having been allowed, it did appear that, confused and even dispirited in advance by how the pitch might hamper their swashbuckling batting style, and the fact of that happening in the event, they allowed caution and tentativeness into their heads for the first time since the 2015 World Cup confirmed the time had come to belt them out of the park.
To put it another way, they stopped batting and started calculating.
At 141-3 in the 32nd over, England would still have expected to double that score and post a total of 280-plus that may not have been crushing for their opponents, but would at least have allowed Morgan to exert scoreboard pressure.
Yet from the moment the skipper perished with a desperate swish, and possibly even before, it seemed England were entertaining thoughts like “what is a good score on this pitch?” rather than concentrating on making as many runs as they could from every ball.
Once players start thinking that way, by definition they are limiting their ambitions and their expectations and instead of playing each ball on its merits they risk trying to fit the next ball into an equation.
The dismissal of Buttler, who, with a man at slip, tried to open the face of the bat to nudge a ball angled across him from left-armer Junaid Khan for a single rather than, as so often before, trusting his eye and hands to smear it through the covers, fits the pattern neatly.
So did the sight of Stokes letting short ball after short ball pass unchallenged.
For England supporters it made relentlessly grim viewing, especially as their hopes had been lifted so high.
For many of those who had heard Morgan’s pre-match assessment of what his team faced, however, and the message contained within the words he chose to use, the sorry end to their excellent campaign may not have come as a total surprise.
*This article was originally published in The Cricket Paper’s 16 June 2017 edition | Subscribe: http://bit.ly/TCP-Sub
