AHMEDABAD: England captain Jos Buttler felt that his team was a 'long way short of their best with the bat' in the World Cup opener against New Zealand at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Thursday.
When queried if the level of performance surprised him, Buttler defended his team, saying, "Oh no, we're not robots. Sometimes, you don't play as well as you would like. Everyone's working hard, everyone's prepared well and as I said we were just a bit off. In international cricket, when you're a little bit short and the opposition has played very well, you're going to lose the game. So, there's plenty of stuff for us to work on and get better at the start of a long tournament."
Analysing the batting effort, he said, "I think we were short of runs with the bat. I think the wicket probably did get better under lights. But I think we were a long way short of our best with the bat and still made 280. So, we're probably looking at a score of 320, 330 which would have allowed us to build pressure.
But I thought the margin for error was very small on that wicket against two batters who played exceptional knocks," Buttler said in a post-match interaction after the team's nine-wicket loss. Asked if the defeat underlined the importance of all-rounder Ben Stokes, Buttler replied, "Not at all. Ben's a top player, but we've got many top players. Everyone in the team got into double figures but didn't have enough guys go on and make telling contributions."
