Flakier than a freshly baked paratha on Bengaluru’s teeming Church Street and gobbled up gleefully by Sri Lanka, this England display was not so much a case of their World Cup crown slipping at the Chinnaswamy Stadium as a full‑blown abdication.
In a must-win game to keep already wafer-thin hopes alive, the good old positives were early and fleeting. Jos Buttler won the toss and, after twice seeing the notion of being a chasing side torched, elected to bat. There was then a first-ball reprieve for Jonny Bairstow, Sri Lanka declining to review an lbw, and a 45-run stand with Dawid Malan.
But thereafter it felt like the cricketing equivalent of a historical reenactment society. England’s 156 all out in 33.2 overs certainly echoed some of the more pungent collapses of yesteryear – the type that brings campaigns like 1999 and 2015 to mind – with scoring stifled and a checklist of errors ticked off en route to a sorry eight-wicket defeat.
Right up there – or perhaps down there – were the two run-outs on the day. Seriously, how many singles have Joe Root and Bairstow scampered together for Yorkshire and England? And yet any Tyke telepathy evaporated in the moment, Root well short of his crease when a chop to Angelo Mathews at backward point was fired back with interest.
Little should be expected of Adil Rashid with the bat these days, the last of those oft-cited 10 first-class centuries made in 2015. And at 147 for eight, England were already toast. Nevertheless, aged 35, experience should have told Rashid a wide does not equal dead ball, the sharper Kusal Mendis instead spotting his doziness at the non‑striker’s end and nailing the throw with the precision of a coconut shy hustler.
Still, greater culpability can be found higher up than Rashid, both on the day in Bengaluru and these past three weeks overall. A batting lineup that once set a new bar in 50-over cricket has become a shadow of its former self. A good few dismissals can be used to underline the point but take Buttler, a generational white-ball great whose only progress on this tour has been to swap the meek edge behind for the full-blooded one.
Few saw such a meltdown coming a month ago, even if performances since made it eminently possible. There has been talk this past week of bringing back the fun, going harder, or even the quasi-sudden-death scenario freeing minds through its stark clarity. The words were said with a lack of conviction, however, with their cricket following suit.
None of this occurs in a vacuum, of course. While England were as honking as the local traffic, they met a Sri Lanka side that positively prowled in the field and were forever asking questions with the ball. None more so than Lahiru Kumara, who with figures of three for 35 offered the kind of muscular middle-overs thud that takes English minds back to Liam Plunkett and a role subsequently unfilled.
It was a pretty slick chase, too. So slick, in fact, it didn’t require Mathews, ominously stationed down at No 7, to get Sri Lanka over the line. Not that the old warhorse – so often the scourge of the English in the past – didn’t have a key say in proceedings, answering his late call-up with the Root run‑out in between the dismissals of Malan and Moeen Ali.
Kudos to Mathews, who was left out of Sri Lanka’s original squad but decided sulking was pointless and instead went to train at the country’s high performance centre in Colombo in anticipation. Having barely bowled these past few years due to a rebellious body, the 35-year‑old grafted hard indoors to restore his all-rounder status. And that medium-pace proved ideal for both a gripping surface and opponents riddled with doubt.
Quite how that doubt has crept in will be chewed over while England fulfil the remaining four (!) fixtures of their grim tour. Perhaps this is simply a symptom of the ageing process, this being the first time that all 11 players in their ODI side have been north of 30. Along with performances, it is a statistic that feeds the notion of a golden chapter having ended.
And yet things aren’t so simple here. For one, there is a T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the USA next year. Will Buttler be given the chance to defend – or as he was at pains to put it upon arrival in India, attack – the second trophy in the cabinet? Not to mention, all bar one in this current squad have been offered new contracts this past week.
The player to miss out? David Willey, who was unbeaten with the bat and claimed the two Sri Lanka wickets to fall. Just like the run-outs and England’s paratha‑like lineup on the day, it rather summed up how a once trend-setting ODI side have lost direction.
