The defending champions, England, faced a shocking loss that shattered their aura of invincibility as they were defeated by a resurgent South Africa at the Wankhede Stadium on a fateful Friday night. With three losses in four games and upcoming matches against in-form teams like India, Australia, and Pakistan, Jos Buttler’s team is on the precipice of missing the last four of the tournament. While there remains a mathematical chance to turn their fortunes around, the situation grows increasingly precarious. Jos Buttler, the captain, admitted, “Yeah, it’s going to be incredibly difficult. We haven’t left ourselves any margin from this point in. But we’ll keep the belief.”
England’s performance in the tournament has been subpar, with losses to New Zealand, South Africa, and Afghanistan. Their future schedule includes a critical match against the host nation, India, in Lucknow on October 29, followed by a contest against Sri Lanka in Bengaluru on October 26. They will then return to the venue where they initially faced New Zealand in the tournament opener to meet Australia on November 4, before clashing with the Netherlands in Pune on November 5. Their final league game will be against Pakistan at Eden Gardens on November 11. The defending champions are walking a tightrope, and any additional loss in these matches could spell doom for their campaign.
“It certainly leaves us in a tough position. There’s no room for error from here on in. That’s going to be incredibly tough, but we’ll sit down and go again. That’s all you can do in this situation,” Buttler tried to put up a brave front. “Yeah, with complete honesty, I think it’s obvious that we’re not performing to our best. It’s my job as captain and along with the rest of the team to work out how we can get back to playing that brand of cricket and the style, and not just that but also playing to our potential and getting back to our best.”
“So, it comes down to a lot of that. A few things here and there that we need to keep challenging ourselves on and working on. In this situation, that’s all you can do. It certainly won’t be anyone giving up or having those kinds of thoughts. We’ll just have to dust ourselves down, stick our chests out, and go again.”
England faced the daunting task of chasing a nearly impossible 400 runs, mainly due to the incredible hitting displayed by Heinrich Klaasen (109) and Marcon Jensen (75 not out) for South Africa. Their partnership of 151 runs for the sixth wicket was scored at a breakneck speed of close to a 200 strike rate.
“I think that was the main turning point of the game. We had them five down, and if we could have found a way to break that partnership and take another wicket, we could have looked at restricting them to 340 or 350, which would have been a really good chase on that pitch. Getting up to 400 was an excellent score, and it took the wind out of our sails. It was always going to be tough from there; we needed everything to go perfectly to pull off a chase like that,” Buttler reflected.
There was some tension regarding the way Klaasen celebrated his century, with a spirited reaction towards bowler Mark Wood. However, the matter was resolved on the field. “I think he was obviously emotional to score 100. I don’t think he needed to celebrate in Mark Wood’s face, and credit to him, he recognized that a couple of seconds after, and he apologized. They played a great knock, and I think he apologized straight away, so there are no hard feelings there,” Buttler revealed.
