England captain Jos Buttler was not happy after England faced a nine-wicket defeat at the hands of Tom Latham-led New Zealand in the opening match of World Cup 2023. On Thursday, October 6, England looked completely thrashed as New Zealand chased down a target of 283 with as many as 82 balls and 9 wickets to spare as well. England started well as Sam Curran got the wicket of Will Young but others failed to pick wickets as Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra added an unbeaten 273-run stand for the second wicket to take the team to the finishing line.
“Yeah, disappointed. Completely outplayed. But the first thing that springs to mind is whether you do lose by a run or a defeat like that, it is one loss at the start of a very long tournament. So, that’s something that I’d be encouraging everyone to remember,” Jos Buttler said in the post-match press conference. “It’s certainly a tough loss to take we were outplayed but you know we’ve got a lot of experience in the room – guys who’ve been through lots of things and faced defeats like that before. So, just as we had won the game, we don’t get too high and we don’t get too low when we lose as well.”
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After being put in to bat first, defending champions England lost wickets at regular intervals, but they somehow managed to score 282 for the loss of nine wickets as well. Adil Rashid and Mark Wood added 30 runs for the last wicket as well. Buttler, meanwhile said that England would have given New Zealand some challenge had they got a score in the range of 320-330 also.
“I think we were short of runs with the bat. I think the wicket probably did get better under the lights, but I think we were a long way short of our best with the bat and still made 280. So, we’re probably looking at a score of 320, 330 which would have allowed us to build some kind of pressure and stuff. But I thought the margin for error was very small on that wicket and two batters who played exceptional innings,” Jos Buttler concluded.
