Image Credit- Getty
Aside from combinations, permutations, and
mathematical formulas, England has very much accepted that their World Cup
defence is done.
It does not bode well for an attempt to win the
following four matches, which is the bare minimum needed with other results
needing to go their way, if England are to advance, after their eight-wicket
thrashing at the hands of Sri Lanka.
After England’s setback in Bengaluru left them with
just one victory from their first five games in the competition, head coach
Matthew Mott was realistic about their chances of making it into the knockout
stages.
“Mathematically, we’d have to have a lot of
things go our way,” Mott told Sky Sports. “As I said leading up
today, we could control it from there, but it certainly hasn’t done our net
run-rate any help at all and, depending on others… we’ll keep fronting, we’ll
keep treating each game in isolation and try and salvage some really good stuff
out the back end of this. But realistically, we’re in bit of trouble, for
sure.”
“Coming into this match we knew it was do or
die,” Mott said. “I thought we started really well with the bat and
were looking quite positive, but we kept losing wickets in succession and we
were at least 100 to 120 short of what would have been a good score on that
wicket.”
“It’s going to be a very sombre dressing-room
tonight. We came here full of hope and hoping to turn things around and we were
well off the mark and it’s going to be a real test of character to get through
the next few weeks and make sure that we can salvage something out of this
campaign.”