‘Sport is so fickle,” said Matthew Mott, England’s white-ball coach. “You’re up and down all the time. And what you need to do is continue to believe in yourself and believe in the process that eventually it will turn around. There’s too many good players in that squad for it not to have turned around if we kept the positive mindset.”
This was the tour when it did turn around, when those who kept the faith were repaid. And it was also the tour when England lost an ODI series 2-1, and a T20 series 3-2. As great leaps forward go, it looked remarkably like a backwards step. Since winning the T20 World Cup last year England have now played six bilateral white-ball series away from home, in Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh and the West Indies, lost five and won one, while also miserably failing to defend their 50-over World Cup title.
