England will have to play some of their “best cricket” to come out of the hole they find themselves in following their shock defeat to Afghanistan in the ODI World Cup.
England suffered a shock 69-run defeat to the Hashmatullah Shahidi-led side with the defending champions faltering in their chase of 285 at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Sunday.
The win was Afghanistan’s second-ever in a World Cup match and lifted them to sixth position on the points table behind England. Speaking to reporters after the game, England captain Jos Buttler said his team will need to lift its game going forward. “It’s not been the way we wanted to start the competition, but this is the situation we find ourselves in and we’re going to have to play some of our best cricket moving forward.” The skipper said he had full faith in his team to pull through this crisis. “Yeah, it’s a big setback obviously. Before the tournament starts you have a different idea of how the first three games would pan out.
“We’ve got to show a lot of character, a lot of resilience within the team and most of all a lot of belief. There was a lot of excellent players in there and we haven’t played well enough today but we must keep that belief,” said Buttler. Afghanistan scored their second-highest World Cup total courtesy a fine 80-run knock from opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz and a superb 28-run cameo by Mujeeb Ur Rahman in the final overs. Afghanistan didn’t lose a wicket till they had crossed the century mark. England, on the other hand, were 91/4 at one stage.
Asked if he could pinpoint where things started going wrong for England, Buttler said, “No, we didn’t, no we started poorly, first ball of the game I missed one and it sort of set the tone for that first 10 overs, we didn’t hit the areas that we wanted to and credit to Gurbaz (80 runs) as he put us under a lot of pressure.”
