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The England team is so driven to win the World Cup for
a second time in a row that they have resumed playing conservative cricket in
their first three games. That is the opinion of their coach Matthew Mott, who
also believes that his team will benefit from the “perspective” that
their families’ arrival in Mumbai this week will provide.
An early exit from the 2015 World Cup led to a
white-ball revolution, which saw England adopt an aggressive, upbeat batting
approach. They have failed to do so during the first three games of the 2023
edition, with most of their batters being struck out in Sunday’s loss to
Afghanistan in Delhi while taking defensive or alternating shots.
“I thought the boys were really up for it, but we
didn’t really fire a shot from the start,” Mott said on Tuesday, the day
after England travelled south-west. “The facts were, we were just a bit
off in every aspect of the game. It’s not panic stations yet, but it’s nowhere
near the start that we were hoping for and the time is now to really turn that
around.
“The overwhelming emotion I could sense [in the
dressing room] was disappointment. The heads were down, as you’d expect. We
tried to give the players a bit of perspective: we’ve come back from spots like
that before, other teams have come back from spots like that before. You’re
never going to go through this World Cup winning every game.
“It’s put us under a lot more pressure than we’d
like. But there’s still a lot of clarity about us having to play our game and
getting back on the road with that. Once we start putting that together, you
build momentum and then hopefully you peak at the right time.”
England will not train until Thursday and several
players’ partners and children arrived in Mumbai on Monday. “When you have
a loss like the other night, the first thing people want to do is get straight
back into training,” Mott said. “But sometimes, that’s the worst
thing you can do.
“You can have your rough days and your bad days,
but [being at a World Cup] is a great time. There are families coming in at the
moment. Players will get a little bit of perspective. You get a lot of
perspective travelling around here as well: we’re incredibly fortunate to do
what we do. The odd bad day, you’ve got to cop on the chin.”