There were no thrown teacups in the England dressing room on Tuesday night after Bangladesh sealed a 3-0 T20 series whitewash in Mirpur. Nobody got the hairdryer treatment. There may be a time and a place for such histrionics, but the end of a short tour at the end of a long winter is not it – no matter how shambolic some aspects of the final performance had been.
“To be honest it’s more about the follow-up,” said Matthew Mott, England’s white-ball coach. “It’ll be quite raw at the moment. I don’t think we did ourselves justice in that last game and pointing it out is not going to make anyone better straight away. We’ll make sure we have those conversations when the players have had time to digest it. We’ve got a bit of a break now, so it’s trying to get them freshened up and ready for their next adventures.”
In the past 12 months England have burnished their reputation as the world’s dominant white-ball side by adding the T20 World Cup to the 50-over version they won in 2019, but tarnished it by losing six series – suffering along the way their first T20 whitewash since 2016 and their first ODI whitewash since 2011 – while winning four. Being a soft touch in bilateral series of little genuine import while regularly winning World Cups would not be the worst position to find yourself in, but it is certainly not Mott’s ambition.
“I don’t think we ever want to accept losing,” the Australian said. “We came here to win the series. We won the ODI series, which was an exceptional effort. It seems a long time ago, but we played some really good cricket in those first couple of games, and it’s the format we are focusing on this year. The T20s we’re disappointed with. I think we had a good enough team to win but let’s not get away from the fact they’re a good team here and don’t lose very often.”
Bangladesh played superbly in the T20s but teams cannot afford to approach a series as England did while still expecting success. After Tom Abell and Will Jacks both withdrew through injury, a decision was made not to call up another batter to replace them, in the hope that deliberately exposing the middle- and lower-order earlier in matches would bring long-term benefits. Now is not the time to judge whether it accelerated those players’ development but it certainly made the team weaker, and stuffed with so many bowlers that some barely bowled at all. It felt, in short, like a fundamentally unserious approach.
“I thought it would have been a hell of a test to bring someone out here at very short notice in these conditions to bat at six or seven, wherever the gap was,” Mott said. “So we made a longer-term decision … One thing we are really mindful of is that we have a lot of top-order batting options, but what we have to continue to improve is that middle order, all-rounders, and their capacity to win games for us. We saw that as an opportunity here. In hindsight people might question that but we were confident that it was the right call.”
Several players performed well, with Jofra Archer irresistible at times and both Jacks and Rehan Ahmed showing promise. Dawid Malan and Jason Roy – neither of whom were considered worthy of a central contract this year – were England’s outstanding batters. Roy had an excellent tour despite leaving it after the ODIs, particularly as he then returned to play for Quetta Gladiators in the Pakistan Super League and smashed 145 off 63 balls within hours of getting off the plane. Phil Salt and James Vince were less successful: in six innings Salt was dismissed by four different left-arm spinners, and by one of them – Shakib Al Hasan – twice, and repeatedly made starts without going on to capitalise.
England’s squad will now disperse, with many heading to India within days for the start of the IPL and no international white-ball action scheduled for nearly six months. “The time to reflect is long,” Mott said. “Our message is going to be around players making sure they’re just trying to get better, wherever they’re playing. We’ll be watching really closely. It’s a long time before our next game, and there’s a lot of opportunities for players to put their hands up.”
