WHIPPING ROY
He faces axe from Matt’s Mott-ley crew
NEW coach Matthew Mott is already facing the music – and opener Jason Roy the axe – after England’s whiteball meltdown this summer.
Mott called Sunday’s feeble 90-run defeat by South Africa at the Ageas Bowl a “line-in-the-sand moment” after 12 games in 24 days where England lost three limited-over series and drew the other.
Hit by World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan’s retirement, and Test skipper Ben Stokes standing down from 50-over cricket, Mott admitted he had been “trying to put band aids over a few little cracks”.
England now have just seven games in Pakistan next month to rediscover a winning formula before the T20 World Cup in Australia this autumn, with the batting unit, and Roy’s damaging loss of form, prominent among their concerns.
Roy has looked a tortured soul, cobbling together 76 runs from 98 balls in six innings, and Mott (inset) hinted that his credit was running low.
He said: “That’s the one that we, as a selection group, need to thrash out. When you’ve been a great player, and you’ve delivered great things on a big stage, you deserve a bit of loyalty.
“But at certain times, hard decisions need to be made. Young players come in and add energy and we have two players (Phil Salt and Harry Brook) on the sidelines who are chomping at the bit for a game.
“They’ve now got an opportunity to go back to The Hundred, get a mountain of runs, keep putting pressure on and be ready for when that opportunity does come.”
Australian Mott was managing director Rob Key’s left-field pick as white-ball coach and he deserves some slack because England’s preposterous schedule in July left him no time to analyse their weaknesses. But let’s not sugar-coat it: He has made a wretched start, losing 2-1 to India in both T20 and one-day series, followed by a 1-1 draw (with one washout) over the 50-over course and another 2-1 defeat by South Africa in the T20 best of three. Jos Buttler has endured a baptism of fire as limited-overs captain and Mott admitted: “It’s been a bit of a struggle throughout the whole summer.
“With the bat, we just never really got any momentum at all. But we probably lacked a bit of confidence.
‘‘And I think that’s probably a few weeks of cricket where we’ve been on the back foot a bit, not really having a lot of time to change a lot of things and trying to put band aids over a few little cracks.
“Jos is really honest about where we need to go. Whenever you lose a great leader there’s a void there. “Anyone who knows Jos knows he’s very hard on himself and for me I think a big part is taking that burden away from him, freeing him up and letting him go out and show the world what a great player he is.”