Autumn Pursuit joy for Jasper and Adam
Livingstone denies talk of England rift
LIAM Livingstone insists there are “no rifts in the camp” amid England’s World Cup meltdown, shooting down former captain Eoin Morgan’s suggestion that all is not well within the squad.
The defending champions have been in dire form since arriving in India, losing five out of their first six group games to lie rooted to the foot of the table.
No England team has ever lost as many games in a World Cup and with three matches still to play, including rivals Australia next up today, there is scope for things to get even worse.
Morgan, the man who lifted the trophy at Lord’s four years ago and is credited with revolutionising England’s white-ball philosophy, remains close to the dressing room following his retirement 18 months ago and has sparked intrigue with his assessment of their campaign.
He suggested morale was as much of an issue as form and claimed “there is something within the team that is definitely unsettled.”
Livingstone waved away that theory, defending the team spirit amid mounting pressure.
“With all respect to Morgs, because everybody loves him in the dressing room, that’s completely not true,” said the Lancashire all-rounder.
“There’s certainly no rifts in the camp, I can tell you that. It’s not bowlers versus batters: we’re a unit. One thing about unity is you probably get tested more when things don’t go well. It’s easy to say the dressing room is amazing when things are going really well.
“From what I’m seeing, everybody is working their nuts off trying as hard as we can to turn it around. Things just haven’t really gone our way and we haven’t played as well as we want, pretty much all of us at the same time, which is disappointing.
“It’s obviously not easy when you lose so heavily a few times in a row, but the boys keep coming back to training day after day. There’s probably nobody more disappointed than what we are in that changing room, but everybody is trying to work together to change it.”
The long-term implications of
England’s losing streak has become painfully clear over the past 48 hours, with their place at the 2025 Champions Trophy now in danger.
Qualification for the secondary 50-over tournament used to come via the ICC rankings, but a little-discussed change was made in 2021 to tie it directly to performance at the World Cup – a shift coach Matthew Mott first became aware of midway through Sunday’s game. England will need to climb from 10th to eighth to avoid being edged out, meaning they cannot afford to treat their remaining fixtures as dead rubbers.
“It is obviously very disappointing, but it gives us something to play for over the next three games,” said Livingstone.
“I think Australia are a good team to be facing next.
“They are someone who, in the World Cups that I’ve played in, we’ve done really well against and they are obviously massive games.
“It will be a great way for us to start our fightback and hopefully we can turn it around.”
SAILORS on Sunday at Hollingworth Lake enjoyed a good day of sunshine and pleasant light westerly winds.
The day started with the Autumn Pursuit Race where the boats set off in a timed sequence with the slowest boats first.
The winner was Jasper Bramwell at the helm, in a GP14, with Adam Mcgovern as crew.
Jasper is getting used to both crewing and helming in a variety of dinghies.
In second place was Graham Booth in a Solo ahead of Martin Brennan, also Solo.
Two points races followed with very close results. In the first one,
Les Burns in a Laser had a good last leg to beat Adam Mcgovern and Jasper Bramwell by 3 seconds on handicap. In turn Adam and Jasper finished 3 seconds ahead of Martin Brennan (Solo).
For the second race, the wind had become southerly and was likely to fade. However Adam and Jasper lead on handicap in their GP14 fending off the challenge of Richard and Heather Marsh in their faster RS400.
Martin Brennan sailed consistently into third place again.