by “The sport is so exciting,” said Matthew Mott, England’s white-ball coach. “You’re up and down all the time. And what you need to do is keep believing in yourself and believe in the process that it will turn around in the end. There are too many good players in that squad that it wouldn’t have turned around if we kept the positive attitude.”
This was the journey when he came around, when those who kept the faith were repaid. And it was also the tour where England lost the ODI series 2-1, and the T20 series 3-2. With great steps forward, it looked very much like a step back. Since winning the T20 World Cup last year, England have now played six bilateral white-ball series away, in Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh and the West Indies, losing five and winning one, while also failed miserably on his 50-over defense. World Cup title.
Related: Jos Buttler insists England want to lead ‘strong’ after West Indies loss
That this latest tour is being seen, and rightly so, as evidence of progress and cause for hope rather than yet another failure shows where the English bar is currently set. It is not high.
The positivity is particularly impressive as England looked perpetual after five of the tour’s eight games. Two games into the T20 series they weren’t pushing the West Indies, they were being ripped apart and toyed around, like a pushbike in Godzilla’s maw.
It was hard to discern any leadership or true direction, any sense of wounded pride or desire for improvement. There was talk of players leaving on match day for a round of golf, seemingly unfazed by the inevitable impact it would have on their performance (still surprising is the obsessive focus on golf shared by many players: when the squad was in Trinidad Brian was invited to Lara’s house for a party (most of them seem to have thrown it not with the man they call the Prince, but with his golf simulator).
None of it was surprising. This has been a tough year for England’s white ball team, full of adversity and controversy. It was the ultimate humiliation for them to find, two-thirds of the way through the World Cup, that they might not qualify for the next Champions Cup, reflecting not only poor team performance but wider organizational dysfunction.
Somehow the players were informed of the qualification process for a major tournament midway through a key match against India, fully two years after it was confirmed at a meeting represented by the England and Wales Cricket Board itself. Then they were dismissed for 129.
It is not surprising in the circumstances that even glimpses of grandeur have been so greedily received, and in the end we managed to catch a glimpse. In the third match of the T20 series, chasing 223 to win, Phil Salt scored an unbeaten 109 and Jos Buttler a half-century, but it was Harry Brook’s 31-ball 31 that won the match and overcame a sagging jetpack of his own team. -religion. Two days later, after the action moved from Grenada to Trinidad, Salt scored another century, Buttler another 50, and Will Jacks and Liam Livingstone both contributed to lift England’s score to an unbeaten 267 not out.
And after two games won by the batsmen came the third, on a worse wicket, where they collapsed and the responsibility fell on the bowlers. They couldn’t quite defend a paltry 132 but only denied that Adil Rashid and Reece Topley were excellent throughout, Chris Woakes good at the start of the innings and Sam Curran at the end, conceding just two. in 19th place. Rehan Ahmed had an outstanding tour and took 11 wickets across the two series, more than any other bowler.
By the end of the series, if you looked a little, you could see a potentially great T20 side taking shape. With a fair wind, the huge advantage of having fresh memories of playing in the Caribbean, a winter focused on the T20s (of this series’ squad only Brook, Ahmed, Gus Atkinson and Ben Duckett, who are in the Test group that travels to to. India for five Tests starting next month, being distracted by red-ball cricket) and fit-again Jofra Archer in the side (much less-fetched than it has been for some time) that they would the prospect of fear.
After Thursday’s game the players returned to their hotel in Port of Spain, where the ECB chair, Richard Thompson, had a few drinks to celebrate the end of the tour and the year, and the opportunity to turn off the after many have been. for a few long and draining months.
They sat for a while, trying to ignore the giant television screen in the corner of the room that was showing highlights of that evening’s decisive victory. Buttler was a leader, in perhaps inconspicuous ways, after all, who eventually took it upon himself to deal with it. Inspiration came here, and disappointment, but it was time to turn it off.
