Jury still out on England team with Ashes looming

For the second World Cup in a row, England have been knocked out by a team that is, in theory, a weaker opponent.

- CAMERON PONSONBY

For it to happen once is a misfortune, for it to happen twice looks like carelessness.

Combine this with the 2022 Commonwealth Games semi-final defeat to India when a match that was in their grasp was let slip, and in each of the last three T20 competitions that England have played they have crumbled in the face of pressure.

This isn’t being wise after the fact. Ahead of the tournament, head coach Jon Lewis said the biggest thing that came out of last year’s World Cup defeat to South Africa was that the team were “still working on dealing with pressure moments”.

Cut to six overs into the West Indian chase and England were in a pressure moment. Boundaries were being struck regularly, but instead of a team rising to the occasion, shoulders went down.

“It’s not the reaction you want as a coach,” Lewis said after the match. “You could see a lot of the players starting to drift off, especially in their energy and the tempo we like to play at.”

At the mid-innings drinks break, Lewis made the unusual decision to go onto the pitch and deliver a team talk. “I suppose I rarely go on the field after a drinks interval, but I went on today just to remind them what we’re all about as a cricket team.”

England had beaten the West Indies in their last 13 matches. Had they won for a 14th time in a row, they would have played New Zealand for a place in the final. A team they have beaten in the last seven matches. England needed two wins against teams they were a combined 20-0 up against to reach a World Cup final, but fell at the first hurdle.