Michael Atherton described England’s chastening collapse against Sri Lanka as symptomatic of a side “low on confidence” after they were bowled out for 156 in Bengaluru.
England lost to Afghanistan and South Africa, making it their third straight defeat at the 2023 World Cup. Dawid Malan fell for the first wicket, while Joe Root was dismissed before the end of the powerplay. His last three wickets took him within 19 runs and the innings was over before the 34th over was over.
During the innings change, Atherton told Sky Sports Cricket: “I always feel with sports teams that confidence is like one’s reputation in life.” It takes a long time to build, and the moments that build up are gone. Again, and what we’ve seen in this tournament is confidence just eroding, to the point where it looks like it’s reaching its lowest point. I think it means that it is coming.
“There’s no hitter who’s really in good shape. You can’t look at this lineup and say, “He looks really good.” There are very few players in this tournament who stand at the crease for any length of time. And there are failures. For example, phasing out root. [Adil] Rashid’s departure is a sign that the team is not on the right track.
“You know, he’s slow to turn around and get back on the field, but it’s not unlike the sacking of Bairstow that we saw during the Ashes. After getting rid of the fairies, he was given the real deal by the Sri Lankan captain. Let’s have some street cricket. Sri Lanka were great, but England were really bad with the bat.”
Rashid was sent off on the non-striker’s side for failing to get his bat behind the goal line in time after Mahesh Thekshana hit David Willey with a long ball to the leg side. Kusal Mendis bowled the stumps off the back of the striker’s wicket and took Sri Lanka’s ninth wicket.
“That’s what happens when teams lack confidence,” Atherton continued. “They don’t have much confidence, they don’t win games and they change the team every game. So before the match in Mumbai he had three changes and here he had three changes too.
“In Mumbai, they moved away from the all-rounder philosophy when they started the tournament. They went to 6 batsmen, 5 bowlers and here they went back to the all-rounder philosophy…match by match There are a lot of changes and it’s a kind of instability.
“And the people themselves are simply not in good shape. As I said, none of the top six are in very good shape. When you combine all of that, you get the result you see here. ”
England dropped Harry Brook and Gus Atkinson in the match against Sri Lanka and replaced them with Liam Livingstone and Chris Woakes. Reece Topley was forced to leave the tournament with an injury after the defeat against South Africa, and Moeen Ali returned to the team.
If England lose to Sri Lanka, it will be their fourth time in this tournament, and they will remain in the tournament with two points from five games.
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