England’s four years, two months and 21 days as defending ODI World Cup champions effectively ends on Thursday when they walk out for the first game of a new tournament as one of 10 teams with identical dreams and theoretically equal chances. It was anyway a title Jos Buttler was happy to lose: “We’re not ‘defending’ anything,” he said on Wednesday. “I want us to attack.”
The past few weeks have been full of talk about 2019, with New Zealand England’s opponents on Thursday as they were in that epic final, but Buttler has tired of it. “For me the past is in the past, you can’t recreate something or hold on to it for ever,” he said. “It’s all about something new. It’s fantastic to be reigning champions but we’ve given that trophy back now. It’s done.
