As England suffered another series ODI series in New Zealand with another huge defeat, their captain Harry Brook has hit-out against the stars in the side. Despite fielding a strong squad, England have lost 23 of their last 34 ODIs and their fortune hasn’t changed since Brendon McCullum took over as all-format coach.
After being bowled out for 234 in the first ODI, England were dismissed for 175 in the second to hand New Zealand the series, making it the seventh instance in eight matches this year where they have been all out. They are yet to post a total of 250 in above in matches where Joe Root has failed to make a half-century, highlighting their batting crisis in the format.
Given their struggles in the format over the last two years England have opted for an aggressive approach. Five of their top 6 are part of the Ashes squad as they expected their aggressive flair to come to the party in ODIs as well. But that hasn’t happened in the format as they either seem to put a big total on board or bowl out with the approach with no middle ground in between.
“It’s not too dissimilar to the way we play Test cricket, really,” Brook said of the difficulties of switching formats. “We play aggressively in Test cricket and it’s not too far off. Obviously we haven’t played much one-day cricket in the last however many years. I can’t quite put my finger on why we haven’t batted well enough. It’s just one of those things. You come to play the second-best team in the world on their own patch and they’ve hammered us. Everybody in that batting line-up is good enough to be able to face a swinging and seaming ball. In my eyes, that’s just an excuse, and they’re good enough to be able to cope with that and score runs against that.”
Having sustained another defeat, Brook appeared to be running thin on patience. “You go round every single player there and you think ‘bloody hell, there aren’t many teams that they don’t get into in the world’. We’ve got five, six, maybe seven batters who would get into almost every team in the world. So yeah, they just haven’t performed well enough. It’s disappointing for the fans, who want to watch us. We entertain people, because they know that we play such an exciting brand of cricket,” he said.
While all the focus has been on the upcoming Ashes, England’s struggles in the format can’t be brushed under the carpet. They are currently in the eighth spot in the rankings just ahead of West Indies and Bangladesh. Teams ranked 10 or lower at March 2027 have to play Qualifiers to make it to the 2027 World Cup to be co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
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