LONDON: England head coach Trevor Bayliss blamed a lack of urgency with the bat for the defeat to Sri Lanka — England’s second loss at the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2019.
England failed to chase down Sri Lanka’s 232-9 at Headingley on Friday, 21 June. Ben Stokes (82 not out off 89 balls) and Joe Root (57 off 89) were the only significant contributors as England folded for 212 in 47 overs.
Reflecting on the 20-run defeat, Bayliss said that England paid the price for taking it a little easy with the bat.
“We seemed to think that if we batted for a bit of time and put together a partnership, we would be alright, but we forgot about the process we go through to make those partnerships happen,” Bayliss said. “If we had shown the urgency at the start of the innings that we had at the end, we would have been in a better place.
“Although the pitch wasn’t the easiest to bat on, normally we are still knocking the ball around and finding gaps. I don’t think we did that well enough. There has been a lot of noise around the England team playing well over the last little while, and I think we just took it a little bit easy with the bat.”
At 170-5 in the 39th over, the game seemed pretty much in England’s grasp, with Stokes and Moeen Ali at the crease. However, Moeen tried to hit a second consecutive six off Dhananjaya de Silva and gave Sri Lanka another opening.
“Moeen is obviously disappointed, but other times, he hits it over the fence and we’d be yelling ‘great shot’. Players have to try things, and you’re always going to make a mistake if you are trying things. That was not a great time to play the shot, having hit the six the ball before.”
England now face some tough challenges ahead, as they face Australia, India and New Zealand in their remaining matches. Bayliss admitted that the team missed Jason Roy, who is currently on the sidelines due to hamstring injury. — icc-cricket.com