Afghanistan have snapped the 2023 World Cup out of its predictable stupor by pushing defending champions England onto shaky grounds. England lacked partnerships to break past Afghanistan's spin trifecta, and suffered from not reading the conditions too well in Delhi. They backed themselves to chase anything successfully at a venue that had seen 754 runs scored in the South Africa-Sri Lanka game, and India making mincemeat of Afghanistan's 272 just four days ago. But conditions, like Rashid Khan, threw England a curveball that they didn't anticipate.
"Look, we always want to play positive and be aggressive and some days you don't play as well as you want to," a sombre-looking Jos Buttler said at the post-match press conference.
"Though Afghanistan built good pressure on us, maybe the wicket didn't play exactly how we thought it would play and maybe the dew didn't come in as much as we thought as well. Obviously, our spinners bowled really well and Afghanistan have some brilliant spinners so that was always going to be tough but we just didn't manage to get the partnerships going that we wanted."
The inferences drawn from the India game also swayed their team selections. In Dharamsala, they read the pitch right in the game against Bangladesh, adding an extra pacer in Reece Topley in place of Moeen Ali, even as Bangladesh picked a third spinner. In Delhi, they stuck to the same XI considering the fact that even India sent Ravichandran Ashwin to the bench in favour of picking Shardul Thakur.
"Yeah, he [Moeen] was close [to being picked] and yeah, the selection was... having watched the first couple of games here obviously India went with the extra seamer as well in their lineup. We thought the wicket would play similarly and maybe the dew would come in in the second half," Buttler said, before quickly adding that England lost due to lack of partnerships.
"But no, I think whichever line-up we had, we just weren't good enough today and we didn't play well enough and full credit to Afghanistan, they deserve to win. It [conditions] probably wasn't exactly how we thought, but I think we just didn't manage to get the partnerships that we wanted," he added.
In England's failed chase, Harry Brook waged a one-man battle against Afghanistan's relentless spin trifecta, and repeatedly earned the applause of Ben Stokes from the sidelines. In a twist of irony, this was the sort of chase that a firebrand like Stokes would've flipped on its head from any position.
Instead, he ran drinks on the day having now missed three World Cup matches after making the grand u-turn from his retirement decision, due to a nagging hip injury.
"There was good value for your shots out there. I think as Harry Brook showed, if you got yourself in, you could score runs and play well. We needed a couple of big partnerships to chase it down and obviously it gets easier the more you get in and we just didn't manage to do that as individuals or as a team," Buttler said.
England are too far along in their white-ball development to falter just because of missing a single player, however massive. Yet the title defence has now begun with L W L, putting their entire campaign in a position of desperation.
"Yeah, it's a big setback obviously. Before the tournament starts you have a different idea of how the first three games would pan out," Buttler admitted, before advocating the need for a show of collective resilience.
"We've got to show a lot of character, a lot of resilience within the team and most of all a lot of belief. There were a lot of excellent players there and we haven't played well enough today but we must keep that belief."
England have to indulge in introspection over the next few days before stepping into two campaign-defining weeks ahead. They next face a free-spirited South Africa on the true Wankhede surface in Mumbai and a well-rounded India in the spin-haven of Lucknow, on either side of their fixture against Sri Lanka in Bengaluru on October 26.
