Defending champions and with a team full of powerful, class players, England perhaps never thought the start of the World Cup would be so nightmarish for them.
The loss to New Zealand could still be discounted, but not the disaster against Afghanistan. Not taking any credit away from the gritty Afghans, England should have won the match even after conceding a 280-plus total. But now that the unthinkable has happened, the Englishmen must regroup and launch their comeback bid. Captain Jos Buttler wants as much.
“It’s not been the way we wanted to start the competition, but this is the situation we find ourselves in and we’re going to have to play some of our best cricket moving forward,” Buttler said while interacting with the media after Sunday’s defeat.
The keeper-batter is sure that he has men with the character to shrug off the disappointment and move ahead.
“Yeah, it’s a big setback obviously. Before the tournament starts, you have a different idea of how the first three games would pan out.
“We’ve got to show a lot of character, a lot of resilience within the team and most of all, a lot of belief. We haven’t played well enough but we must keep that belief,” Buttler insisted.
But what went wrong against the Afghans? Has he identified the mistakes? “We started poorly, first ball of the game I missed one and it sort of set the tone for that first 10 overs, we didn’t hit the areas that we wanted to and credit to (Rahmanullah) Gurbaz (80 runs) as he put us under a lot of pressure,” the skipper said.
It’s strange how the team that has taken Test cricket by storm with its “Bazball” approach couldn’t really switch on their best aggressive attitude against the Afghans, who aren’t considered among the cricket elite.
“We always want to play positive and be aggressive and some days you don’t play as well as you want to.
“Though Afghanistan built good pressure on us, maybe the wicket didn’t play exactly how we thought it would play and maybe the dew didn’t come in as much as we thought as well,” Buttler said.
The recent fightback in the Ashes series against Australia, however, points to the fact that this England team does well when their backs are to the wall. This time too Buttler has the belief.
“We’ve played some good cricket in all scenarios, whether we’ve been on top or whether we’ve had our backs against the wall.
“It’s a position you find yourselves in, it’s not the position you wanted to be in three games ago, but the character is excellent as I’ve mentioned, there’ll always be belief and we’ll dust ourselves down and go again.”
Afghan appeal: Smile please
Jonathan Trott, Afghanistan’s head coach, feels the famous upset win over defending champions England in the World Cup on Sunday will encourage more youngsters back home to play cricket.
Afghanistan has recently been shaken by a devastating earthquake.
“The players know this win will bring smiles on the faces of the affected people back home. This win will also encourage boys and girls in Afghanistan to pick up a cricket bat or ball,” said Trott, a former England player.
“It’s not just cricket the guys have played, the guys know the significance of this win. The guys know what people back home went through and are doing their bid to help the victims,” Trott said.
Opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz, who played a significant role in the win with his knock of 80 off 57 balls, said the win means a lot for the people back home.
“The win will give people in Afghanistan reason to be happy after the disaster. We all know how things are back home and doing whatever possible to comfort them and help them,” Gurbaz said.
Rashid Khan echoed Gurbaz. “It will be a big celebration back home... I think cricket is the only source which gives them lots of happiness and lots of good memories and people back home just wait.”
With inputs from PTI
