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Crunch time beckons for England in must-win encounter

BIRMINGHAM: England can rely on playing their must-win game in front of the noisiest, most passionate, drum-banging, trumpet-blasting cricket fans in the land who will cheer every mistake by the opposition.

But the World Cup hosts will also have some supporters of their own at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

India’s so-called Bharat Army fans are expected to outnumber England’s Barmy Army supporters in a Sunday sellout at the around 25,000-capacity Edgbaston in what will feel like a home game for India.

India, who have been dominant throughout the tournament apart from one close-call against winless Afghanistan, will join Australia in the semi-finals with a win. They have 11 points from six games.

Fourth-place England have eight points from seven games and face New Zealand in their last group match.

England were ranked No. 1 at the start of the tournament and were the early title favourites. Eoin Morgan’s team is not out of contention if they lose to India, but their fate will no longer be in their hands, and their dreams of a One-day International cricket revolution potentially over. Failure to advance by what was widely seen pre-tournament as the finest-ever England ODI team skewing rivals with a surfeit of six-smacking skills would be a hard blow to take.

And hard blows have been partly blamed for England’s predicament so far with their super-aggressive approach and alleged no Plan B often wasting chances of taking singles and 2s, and innings-building in a more modest way. The team lacks the strategic finesse in One-day Internationals that India have thanks to inspirational captain Virat Kohli.

Questions are again being asked over England’s tournament temperament. They have the record for the highest ODI score of all time with 481-6, set in a 242-run destruction of a below-strength Australia line-up last year. That total is 64 runs higher than the record World Cup score of 417-6 set by Australia against Afghanistan in 2015. But Australia are five-time champions and that’s five more titles than England has in its unused World Cup trophy cabinet.

India have put in more of a collective performance than England, as evidenced by not having a single player so far in the tournament’s top five of most runs, highest score, most wickets and most dot balls.

England have Joe Root at No. 4 with 432 accumulated runs, Jason Roy and Eoin Morgan 2nd equal and fourth with highest individual innings scores of 153 and 148, Jofra Archer No. 2 with 16 and Mark Wood No. 5 with 13 on the list of most wickets, and Archer third on the list of most dot balls delivered (236). India have not lost a game, England have lost three.

Despite these individual achievements, unease is starting to emerge with batsman Jonny Bairstow reacting angrily to former England captain Michael Vaughan’s criticism by claiming some people in England want the team to lose. Vaughan used social media to reply, saying: “It’s not the media’s fault you have lost three games.”

Conditions are set to be mostly dry and spin-friendly, more to India’s advantage than England’s. But don’t write off a severely wounded England just yet.

Jos Buttler, playing a more conciliatory role than Bairstow, told the BBC that the team has kept its self-belief and “we have a chance of doing something very special.”

England’s dilemma was summed up by Ben Stokes after his 89 failed to prevent a 64-run defeat by Australia at Lord’s on Tuesday.

“We just need to adjust to situations and then conditions, but we are not for one minute going to take a backward step,” he said.

Former England captain Mike Atherton, writing in The Times, said: “It requires thought and intelligence to adapt, without sacrificing the intent that is fundamental to their approach — a tricky balance.”

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2019



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