Former England captain Nasser Hussain said that the side stood still without evolving much following their dismal 2023 World Cup campaign. Considered among the heavy favourites to emerge, the winner, the defending champions had a rather forgettable campaign. They finished seventh on the points table, with three wins from nine games as well.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Hussain said, “They looked like a team that had stood still for a while and there’ll be reasons for that. Whatever they’ve done out here, we shouldn’t take away from what’s happened across the last seven or eight years because we’ve produced some of the great white ball cricketers. Don’t think I would have picked anyone different from the squad they picked but because of the focus on Test cricket with Rob Key, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, I think Jos Buttler and Matthew Mott have had to take a backstage look at things.”
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However, Nasser Hussain added that the other teams overtook England thanks to them standing still and resting on their laurels from 2019. Apart from facing losses, England lost by a sound margin by most of the table-toppers, including India, New Zealand, and South Africa.
“When you do that and stay still and think that you’re fine because you won the tournament the last time, anyone in sport will tell you that the others are improving all the time and they will go past you. And the likes of India, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand have all gone past them,” added Hussain.
With the 2025 Champions Trophy qualification in jeopardy, England barely managed to enter thanks to wins in their last two matches. And, Nasser Hussain dismissed the criticism of the key decision makers – Rob Key, Jos Buttler, and Matthew Mott for England’s disappointing 2023 World campaign as well.
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“With all of the criticism, you have to remember that two months ago Rob Key’s stock could not be higher in world sport, with the way he had transformed English cricket and Test match cricket. No one was complaining about the World Cup winning captain and no one was complaining about Mott,” said Hussain.
“They were quite pleased that they’d taken a backwards stage to McCullum and Stokes but obviously now with how poor they’ve been here, they’re under pressure and they have to have a bit of a reset and a rethink and decide which of these players are going to go on the journey with them and which are going to be left behind. The interesting calls are the ones who haven’t been picked and deciding which of those senior players who have been world class are going to carry on with that journey. And I do think that Mott and Buttler should be the ones in charge of that journey,” concluded Nasser Hussain.
