MUMBAI: England’s miserable early exit from the World Cup has left the reigning champions facing several questions but with few simple answers. A departure before the knockout stages was finally confirmed by Saturday’s 33-run loss to arch-rivals Australia in Ahmedabad — with England’s sixth defeat in seven games at the tournament leaving them rock bottom of the 10-team table.

Even non-Test playing Netherlands, the lowest-ranked side, have managed two wins. It was their batting that let England down again as they failed to chase a target of 287 that would once have been well within the grasp of a powerful top order.

England have managed just one individual century in this World Cup thus far, through Dawid Malan, with star batsmen Jonny Bairstow, out for a duck on Saturday, and Joe Root failing to fire. Broader issues have also been involved in a dramatic fall from their 2019 World Cup triumph.

Early defeats by New Zealand and Afghanistan led England to abandon their policy of picking a side full of all-rounders, only for team management to then reverse course again as they struggled to find a winning formula.

A similar lack of clarity was also evident in the approach of England’s batsmen, caught between the policy of all-out aggression, that had served the team so well under now retired World Cup-winning skipper Eoin Morgan, or instead laying a foundation and then accelerating.

Much of the focus now will be on England white-ball captain Jos Buttler and limited-overs coach Matthew Mott. But ditching Buttler as skipper and replacing experienced Australian coach Mott won’t be straightforward given England have a Twenty20 World Cup title to defend in the United States and the West Indies in June. That event may also delay a rebuild of England’s white-ball team, with only four members of their original 15-man World Cup squad under the age of 30.

‘Completely spooked’

Another complicating factor is that during this tournament, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced a new raft of central contracts that included all their largely under-performing World Cup squad, with the curious exception of hard-grafting pacman David Willey — who announced his international retirement days later.

The ECB also introduced multi-year deals for the first time. Injury prone fast bowler Mark Wood, 33, whose six tournament wickets have cost an expensive 58 runs apiece, has been given a three-year contract.

But former England captain Michael Vaughan insisted the ECB had been “completely spooked “ by suggestions players would quit the international game altogether in favour of lucrative franchise deals. “Let them sign multi-year franchise contracts if they want because players will always want to play for England, and if they don’t, fine, pick someone who does,” Vaughan added.

The downgrading of the domestic One-Day Cup, because of the advent of The Hundred, has hampered England’s development of new 50-overs players. So too has a reduction in the number of England’s ODIs - 42 in the four years prior to this World Cup compared to 88 in the equivalent cycle before the 2019 edition.

Too many of those games have been low-grade affairs, with England often not fielding their strongest side, in part because of the difficulty of balancing all their international commitments. It all led to a complacent ‘it will be alright on the night’ approach that has been found spectacularly wanting in India.

Promising batsman Harry Brook may now be recalled for England’s last two World Cup matches. But things could yet get worse before they get better as England need to finish in the top eight to be assured of qualification for the 2025 Champions Trophy.

Defeats by the Netherlands and Pakistan could see England fail to be involved in a major ICC men’s tournament for the first time in their history. It all adds up to the biggest challenge of Rob Key’s 18-month reign as England managing director, which, thanks mainly to a resurgent Test side, has so far largely been a story of success.

In the meantime gifted batsman Buttler, whose run of low scores continued when out for one against Australia, was left saying: “We’ve let ourselves down. We’ve let down people down at home, who support us through thick and thin and we wear that on our own shoulders.” — AFP