Captain Jos Buttler said England needed to feel hurt after their shock ICC Men’s T20 World Cup defeat to Ireland on Wednesday and demanded a reaction for their next blockbuster clash against Australia.
Reactions as Ireland defeat England at rain-hit T20 World Cup match: ‘Group 1 is wide open’
England went into the clash in Melbourne as strong favourites but were outplayed and lost by five runs on the DLS scoring method when rain arrived and the game was called off.
Following the upset against Ireland, the captain spoke about the need to let this defeat hurt, where he thought England lost the plot, the scenario in Group 1 being wide open and more.
Here’s a look at some of the edited excerpts from the press conference:
Q. Jos, where was the game lost today?
JOS BUTTLER: I think especially in the first 10 overs with the ball. I think we were a long way short of the standards we set ourselves the game before. We let Ireland get away from us, and I thought we dragged it back well in the second half, but that put a lot of pressure on us right from the start.
Q. Was there any disappointment at that time you came off? Do you think you maybe could have put a couple more balls in?
JOS BUTTLER: Not really, to be honest. It was getting quite heavy. Of course, we’d love to stay on and try to hit a couple of sixes if we could, but it got heavy.
I think the game was lost before that point. I think we were a long way short of where we needed to be right throughout the game, and Ireland deserved to win.
Q. What do you say to the lads to kind of get them up? Or do you need to say much at all?
JOS BUTTLER: I think we should let it hurt, to be honest. I think days like today are really, really disappointing, and you’ve got to feel that. There’s no point in saying let’s sweep it under the carpet and move on.
I think we’ve got to reflect – we’ve got to do it quickly obviously with a game soon after, but today should hurt.
Q. You’ve had World Cup setbacks before, most notably in 2019. Can you lean on that at all, or because it’s such a different tournament with the games coming thick and fast, is that something you can rely on or not?
JOS BUTTLER: The character in the group is strong. We’ll be hurting today, and we’ll be disappointed, but no doubt I expect a reaction from the team.
Q. Just on the group itself, talk about Friday being big, still weather around, New Zealand-Afghanistan, we don’t know what will happen there, but just a word on how this group looks at the moment?
JOS BUTTLER: I don’t understand the question.
Q. The fact that it’s still so wide open.
JOS BUTTLER: Oh, of those in the actual group, okay. Yeah, it is open. I think the teams beating each other with weather around, we don’t know exactly how things are going to pan out. Again, that just makes it probably more disappointing with today actually, the fact that we had everything in our favour today in terms of winning the toss. So we knew exactly what was required of us. To not take advantage of that certainly hurts.
Yeah, the group is wide open. There’s plenty of things that could happen, whether it’s due to weather or teams beating each other. But we have to dust ourselves down and get back to playing better cricket.
Q. The word you used earlier to describe the group was hurting. I’m just curious if the opposition, does that increase that emotion given that it’s Ireland? Or if this scenario was happening on Friday against Australia, would the feeling be any stronger or weaker?
JOS BUTTLER: No, I think certainly the expectation was on us to win the game today. I think we should be expecting to beat an Ireland team. We expected a tough challenge, but we should be expected to win that game. So of course that adds extra disappointment.
I think whether you say we’re favourites or not going into an Australia game is more of a different conversation. So I think that adds extra hurt especially.
With inputs from AFP and ICC Business Corporation FZ LLC 2020 via Online Media Zone.
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