England head coach Matthew Mott added that while England still have a mathematical possibility of reaching the semi-finals of the 2023 World Cup, realistically they are out of the race. Mott said this after England succumbed to an eight-wicket loss against Sri Lanka at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Thursday, October 26. Batting first after winning the toss, they were bowled out for 156 in 33.2 overs, with not a single batter scoring a half-century as well. The Lankans then reached victory in 25.4 overs. Following their fourth loss in five games, England are placed ninth in the 2023 World Cup points table.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the loss, head coach Mott said: “Mathematically, we’d have to have a lot of things go our way, As I said leading up today, we could control it from there, but it certainly hasn’t done our net run-rate any help at all and, depending on others… we’ll keep fronting, we’ll keep treating each game in isolation and try and salvage some really good stuff out the back end of this. But realistically, we’re in bit of trouble, for sure.”
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The veteran also agreed that England won’t find it easy to lift themselves from the position they find themselves in as well. However, before the loss to Sri Lanka, England had lost to New Zealand, Afghanistan and South Africa. Their only win came in the game against Bangladesh in Dharamsala. England will play against India in Lucknow on October 29.
“It’s going to be a very somber dressing room tonight. We came here full of hope and hoping to turn things around and we were well off the mark and it’s going to be a real test of character to get through the next few weeks and make sure that we can salvage something out of this campaign,” Mott again shared.
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“We always reserve the right to pick players for different conditions. We admitted last time we probably got the balance wrong and so therefore we went back to the same balance that we’ve had before and look, when you when you lose by that margin, I don’t think it’s about a couple of small selections here and there,” he concluded. “I think it’s a collective and we’ve all got to take responsibility for the sub-par effort in this campaign, and everyone’s going to come from the hills to dissect what we’ve done wrong but we’ll make sure we find some positives…”
