The England white-ball coach, Matthew Mott, has told the team’s fans not to live in the past and asked for “a little bit of patience and a bit of perspective”. Mott said the squad is “a very different unit” to the side that won the World Cup in 2019 under Eoin Morgan and was narrowly beaten last year in the semi-finals of the Twenty20 World Cup.
England were soundly beaten in the decisive Twenty20 match against South Africa on Sunday and having not lost a home series in the format since 2018 they have lost two in the space of a month. In that time they have also played two three-match one-day international series, losing against India and drawing against the Proteas, leaving Jos Buttler winless in four white-ball series since assuming the captaincy in June.
Mott said: “A lot of people reflect back on the past about how great a team this is. This is a very different unit at the moment. We need to acknowledge that and make sure we live in the present and work on what we need to get better at.
“I think Jos is really honest about where we need to go. It wasn’t a great performance throughout the summer and there’s areas that we can really improve on.”
England have been affected not only by Morgan’s retirement but by injuries to several bowlers – Mott said “it’s going to be a stretch” for Jofra Archer to play in the T20 World Cup in October while Mark Wood is “probably closer” – and poor form among the batters. Jason Roy has had a particularly testing summer: over the three previous years he averaged 48.76 in 17 T20 innings at home with a strike rate of 111.7, this summer he averaged 12.66 at a strike rate of 77.55.
“When you’ve been a great player, and you’ve delivered great things on a big stage, you deserve a bit of loyalty,” Mott said. “You can hold that for a bit, but at certain times hard decisions need to be made. No one in the team has a mortgage on a spot.”
With several younger batters, foremost among them Phil Salt and Harry Brook, on the fringes of the team, Mott said good performances in the Hundred, which starts on Wednesday, may prove decisive. “Those two players are champing at the bit for a game,” he said. “That’s really healthy. They’ve now got an opportunity to go to the Hundred, get a mountain of runs, keep putting pressure on and to be ready for when that opportunity does come.”
