A star-studded England line-up has fallen well short of expectations in defence of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup title they famously won in 2019. Former captain Michael Atherton identifies what has gone wrong.
England’s title defence is on the brink of collapsing well short of the knockout stages at the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023. A sixth defeat coming at the hands of arch-rivals Australia on Saturday, or in one of their other remaining matches against the Netherlands and Bangladesh, will confirm what already seems most likely – England’s title defence is over before it truly began. “It has been a disastrous defence of the title,” Atherton said on the latest episode of The ICC Review podcast.
“I think most people could accept a team that played pretty decent cricket and just came up short. That happens in sports. There is no divine right to win every game, no divine right to win these competitions, and England has been very good for a long time. But it’s the way England has just been hammered. If you look at the defeats, five of them have been by unbelievable margins. I don’t think anybody saw that coming, and it is very difficult to understand,” added Atherton.
England’s campaign has barely got going after being thumped in the tournament opener—a rematch of the epic 2019 final against New Zealand—by nine wickets.
The convincing 137-run win over Bangladesh that followed put England back on track, but four straight defeats since then mean they have one win from six matches and a growing list of problems to address. “The end result is that England have not done very well, and therefore you’ll find reasons to fit the performance,” Atherton said.
“So whether it’s the toss, whether it’s the selection, whether it’s the central contracts that were announced, who knows? You could probably say it’s a combination of all those things, little things that have added up and eventually have meant that this team is a long way short of where it should be,” added Atherton.
