Timid cricket was to blame, not the pitch

There will be a lot of talk about the Cardiff pitch after Pakistan dumped england out of the Champions Trophy. But that won’t wash with me.

It’s disrespectful to Pakistan, who played brilliantly and made the best of the conditions. Before the game I said it would depend which Pakistan turned up. They answered that one emphatically.

And england must have known that pitches in ICC tournaments can start to show wear and tear.

It must have been part of their plans, not least because it happened during the 2013 competition, when they ended up playing the final against India on a turning track at edgbaston. What they encountered shouldn’t have surprised them at all. Their coach Trevor Bayliss has always asked for them to play smart cricket, not just gung- h o cricket. This was anything but smart. In fact, it was timid. After two years of positive one-day batting, that is the biggest disappointment.

I thought they got the pace of their innings all wrong. They went tooo hard early on, with Jonny Bairstow picking out the only man on the leg-side fence, and then showed signs when eoin Morgan and Ben Stokes weree together that they were reassessing.

But Morgan chose the wrong moment to attack hasan Ali, who in the absence of Mohammad Amir was Pakistan’s biggest threat, especially when he was finding reverse swing from round the wicket against the left-handers. he was exceptional.

After that, england went too deep into their shells, and only occasionally emerged to do something daft — like Moeen Ali having a hook with two men out in the deep, or Adil rashid not diving for the crease. Basic stuff, really.

england kept going from one extreme to the other. It wasn’t clever batting, and it cost them dear. By the end, Stokes wasn’t sure whether to attack or defend because wickets were falling around him.

had they been more streetwise, they would have worked out that 250 would have put this Pakistan team under pressure. remember that they struggled to make 237 to beat Sri Lanka in Cardiff on Monday — and Sri Lanka have a weaker attack than england.

That said, Pakistan were exceptional. even without the injured Amir, their bowling looked threatening throughout. hasan Ali brought energy and flair to the attack, and they looked unrecognisable from the side that had played so badly against India.

And chasing such a low target meant that the pressure was off them if Fakhar Zaman got off to a flyer, because the others could bat around him. That’s precisely what happened, and it allowed Pakistan to put grumbles about the pitch into perspective.

England didn’t bowl badly, they just didn’t have enough to defend. And this result doesn’t make them a bad side. They’ve made too much progress since the 2015 World Cup for us to write them off because of one bad day.

It’s just disappointing that the occasional weaknesses we’ve seen all seemed to come together in a semi-final of a global event. That’s what will hurt them most.