England (131 all out) lose to South Africa (137-3) by seven wickets
At least they avoided the indignity of being beaten before even the floodlights had come on. But only just. That’s how abject England’s performance was in this opening one-day international against South Africa.
Forget talk about a bright new era for this white-ball collective under new captain Harry Brook and coach Brendon McCullum.
This hammering took the hosts back to the dark days of the 2015 World Cup – a tournament when McCullum butchered wayward bowling to carry New Zealand to victory in a supposed day-night ODI as the co-hosts coasted to their target of 124 at Wellington’s Cake Tin before the lights had been switched on.
In all, England’s woeful first-innings effort lasted just two hours. A collapse of eight for 50 saw them stumble from 81 to two to 131 all out. The run out of Brook that sparked the collapse was bad.
The batting that came thereafter was even worse, with Jamie Smith, Jacob Bethell, Will Jacks and Jos Buttler all out to terrible shots. England’s fifth-highest runscorer was Extras.
To make matters worse, debutant fast bowler Sonny Baker was then pulverised during South Africa’s chase, the 22-year-old seeing his seven wicketless overs go for an eye-watering 76 runs.
Baker’s debut turned into a disaster (Photo: AFP/Getty)This all came during a blitz from Aidan Markram that saw the South Africa opener reprise McCullum’s role at Wellington a decade ago, hitting 86 from 55 balls before eventually being caught off Adil Rashid with his team needing just 11 to win.
In the end, they waltzed to their target with 29.1 overs to spare even if Rashid’s further two wickets when the scores were level put a sheen of respectability on the margin of defeat that England didn’t deserve. The real takeaway should be Brook’s men lost this in just three hours and 40 minutes of cricket, the game settled at 5.10pm local time.
It is six months since these teams last met in Karachi, England hammered in a Champions Trophy dead rubber 24 hours after Buttler had announced he was stepping down as captain.
Seven of that XI played here and if anything, this team appear to have gone backwards since then.
A 3-0 series whitewash of the West Indies back in June was viewed as a tentative step forward at the start of Brook’s tenure. After all, the Windies didn’t even qualify for the last 50-over World Cup.
And while there are two matches left in this series, the next at Lord’s on Thursday, the nature of this defenestration shows there is a long way to go before England can be competitive against the very best.
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As bad as they were here, and this was the seventh defeat in 10 ODIs since McCullum took charge, there are mitigating circumstances that should be taken into consideration.
Firstly, hardly any of these players have had a break this summer and it didn’t help that this match took place just two days after the final of the Hundred at Lord’s. As such five of this squad were still driving up the M1 when England had their pre-match training session on Monday morning.
Scheduling can be partly blamed but South Africa can also cite the fact they only arrived into the country six days before this opening ODI after they flew directly from their tour of Australia.
It’s a damning indictment on the modern international schedule that this match was taking place on this day. Still, it’s telling that it was England who looked jet-lagged here rather than South Africa.
It’s also hardly surprising England’s players look so out of sync playing ODI cricket when they’ve jumped into this straight from the hit-and-giggle of the Hundred. That divisive tournament has also reduced the domestic 50-over competition to a second-string event, starving the best from valuable experience playing this format.
Still, these are mitigating factors, not excuses. Former England captain Michael Vaughan put it best when he lamented on commentary: “The schedule of the summer is not great but that is not an excuse. England have let themselves down. This is not good enough.”
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