Hayter: A reality check! Remember where we were
There is no getting away from the fact that England’s failure to live up to other people’s idea of favouritism for the ICC Champions Trophy has hit them and their supporters hard. The bloke sitting on the seat behind me on the train back from Cardiff after their semi-final defeat by Pakistan, for example, was quite inconsolable.
“It was awful,” he mobiled whichever loved-one would be waiting for him when he got home, “very disappointing.
“The worst I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” the poor chap continued, warming to his theme, though this did beg the question of how many of England’s 50-over campaigns he had actually watched in his “whole life”.
“Nothing whatsoever to cheer about at all. “Dreadful.” Without going quite so far, the demeanour of Joe Root, according to those who witnessed his post-match analysis, suggested someone had run over the family pet.
“It doesn’t feel great at the minute,” he admitted.
“I wouldn’t say I’m shell-shocked, just very disappointed.
“We’ve played some really good cricket throughout the whole of this summer and it was frustrating not being able to do it in this match.”
If some of this sounds familiar, it should.
Two years ago, words like awful, dreadful, shell-shocked, disappointed, frustrating and far worse were used to describe England’s performance in the last 50-over global tournament, when they almost turned up for the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand and then didn’t.
The difference is that whereas, in those moments of pain, anger, recrimination, repercussion and despair, things were bound to get better because they simply could not get any worse, this time, England, their captain Eoin Morgan and their coach Trevor Bayliss are entitled to some degree of satisfaction that although they’ve ultimately failed to achieve their goal, they went a very long way towards doing so in a relatively short period of time.
And their supporters are also entitled to hope that, with similar progress over the next couple of years, they really do have a strong chance of finally breaking their duck in the 2019 World Cup on home soil.
Surely, the best, not the worst, is yet to come.
It may have been after the event but Bayliss’ assessment of where England really stood in the scheme of things here was entirely sound.
While he, too, used the ‘d’ word, expressing his own disappointment, he stressed:“I know you guys had us down as the favourites here, but that certainly wasn’t out of the team or from my point of view.
“Where we finished, third or fourth is probably about right at the moment, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
After all, even though his side had just beaten South Africa, the No.1 ranked ODI side in world cricket, England came into this tournament ranked just fifth.
Bayliss identified fielding and bowling as the main areas on which to work and in which he expects improvement but was also correct in indicting that his batsmen will win them more games than they lose.
So, carry on attacking, Messrs Hales, Roy, Bairstow, Root, Morgan, Stokes, Buttler and Ali, pushed all the way by up-and -comers Billings, Livingstone, Duckett and the rest, while making sure, unlike against Pakistan in Cardiff, you have a Plan B, if needs be, of rotating the strike and playing the ball not the plan.
Carry on learning Rashid,Wood, Ball and Plunkett, how to change up, change down and find more ways of actually bowling people out, still the best method of containment by far. And get fit and stay fit, Chris Woakes. In 2015, desperate situations required desperate measures; a new blueprint that comprised scores of 300-plus as the norm, strike rates as near to 100 as possible and a complete change of approach that allowed batsmen licence to fail in pursuit of success.
But if failure to get out of the group stage then felt like the end of the world for England, so long as they maintain the rate of progress they have shown in the last two years, this feels different.
For while, at this moment, their defeat against Pakistan in Cardiff this week will be hurting them and their supporters badly, England’s success in raising themselves from horizontal lightweights to genuine contenders in such a short period, before ultimately falling just one performance short of making the final of the mini world-cup, represents a massive step in the right direction.