As England’s players picked the bones out of the
thrashing by New Zealand in their World Cup opener, Joe Root made a telling
prediction. “I don’t think we’ll see guys getting caught mid-off or
long-off check-driving anymore,” Root told the BBC. “They’ll be
hitting it 20 rows back.”
After a lacklustre series against New Zealand last
month, Root’s 77 for England was a welcome return to form. He witnessed five of
his team members being disqualified while he was at the non-striker’s end and
seemed to notice a pattern: other than Harry Brook, none of England’s hitters
were dismissed when attempting to hit sixes.
How about Jonny Bairstow? He fell trying to loft
Mitchell Santner inside-out over extra cover, but the ball hit the inside of
his bat and spun harmlessly towards wide long-off, where Daryl Mitchell made a
brilliant running catch to his left due to it angling straight in from around
the wicket rather than turning away.
After facing four straight dot balls from Trent Boult
at the end, Liam Livingstone shaped to throw a knuckleball towards the space
between midwicket and long-on with England looking to pick up the pace.
Instead, Matt Henry had time to run in off the boundary and settle below it
because his leading edge hung in the air.
Many would find Brook’s demise to be infuriating; he
was caught in the deep while attempting to smash a fourth straight boundary off
Rachin Ravindra during an over of drag-downs. As well as Moeen Ali’s, which was
passed to Glenn Phillips across the line. While trying to reverse-sweep the
same bowler, Root himself was yorked.
Even Jos Buttler was a gentle fall. He smashed James
Neesham and Ravindra for successive sixes, making it plain that he was going
after New Zealand’s replacement bowlers. But when Henry came back, he attempted
to push a ball that had gone inward – “wobble-seam, trying to use the
crease,” Henry said – and was thrown off balance. He quickly threw back
his head in annoyance.
It is obvious that England tried to isolate New
Zealand’s all-rounders. Ish Sodhi was not included in the team, and Lockie
Ferguson (back) and Tim Southee (thumb) were unable to play. As a result, Tom
Latham was forced to rely on Neesham, Ravindra, and Phillips, who combined for
20 overs and recorded figures of 3 for 149.
However, it’s possible that England was overly
respectful of New Zealand’s three key bowlers, Boult, Henry, and Santner. Devon
Conway and Ravindra did not use the same caution when facing England’s top
bowlers, taking out Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, and Mark Wood for combined
scores of 6 for 133 in 30.
After the game, Morgan said, “They were so far
off the mark. If you listened to Jos Buttler throughout the back-end of our
summer, he continued to reiterate the message that you have to be more
aggressive, to be brave… You have to be able to compete to say you were
outplayed; for a lot of the game this evening, England didn’t compete.”
England shouldn’t freak out. They will almost
certainly advance to the semi-finals with six victories from their remaining
eight games, but Buttler will be disappointed that his hitters did not
consistently put pressure on New Zealand’s bowlers after they appeared to have
found their rhythm and tempo in this format last month. New Zealand batted more
like England than did England itself, if anything.