Under the captaincy of Jos Buttler, the defending champions of the Men’s T20 World Cup 2024, in the West Indies and the United States of America, the England side was knocked out after their heavy 68-run defeat against India, during the second semifinal at the Providence Stadium in Guyana. The batting line-up didn’t have an answer to India’s spin unit, who collectively ended with 6/58 in 11 overs.
Inviting India to bat first on a surface which was expected to get slow towards the back-end of the innings, Buttler dangled the carrot, but the 2007 champions were smart enough to hold their nerve even after a few early wickets. Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav’s joint fifties pushed India to 171/7 in 20-overs.
England had just started to get a start with 26 runs without any damage in three overs, but once they lost their captain Jos Buttler in the very first ball of Axar Patel, the rest of the batting order fell like a pack of cards, as they were bundled out for 103 in 16.4 overs.
‘I just look forward to some space from the game’- Jos Buttler
On a dry surface, England could have gone for batting first, and put up a good total, to put pressure on the Indian side to reach the target under the heat of the sun. But once the opposition crossed the 160-run mark, the 2010 champions were always behind the eighth-ball in the chase.
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Under Buttler’s leadership, since winning the T20 World Cup in 2022, England hasn’t enjoyed a sweet time in the shortest format of the game, as they have been defeated in 11 T20I out of 22 games, with one ending in a wash-out affair.
When asked which target the team was planning to chase, England gave his say, which suggested that India was almost 20 runs ahead of what their opposition thought would be comfortable to chase.
‘Yeah, disappointing. I think we were outplayed by India. They fully deserved the victory. So, yeah, I thought they had an above-par score.’ Jos Buttler expressed to the reporters at the end of the semifinal in Guyana. ‘I was hoping to restrict them to 145 – 150, probably on that pitch. It was always going to be a tough chase from there.’
England was coming into the world event on the back of their 2-0 series win over Pakistan, whereas their captain has been playing non-stop cricket for the last five months, including the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024.
‘To be honest, I’m just looking forward to some time away from the game.’ Jos Buttler remarked on his captaincy future. ‘I think, as I sit here, emotional after a loss, I don’t need to dive too deep into it right now. I just look forward to some space from the game.’
There were so many batters, including the likes of Moeen Ali or Jonny Bairstow who were not reading the spinners and found to be awful in the middle.
‘No, I think I look back to Leeds when we all met up. I think everyone has made progress and we’ve played well and not well enough, but I think the stuff that we’ve been doing behind the scenes, the way we’ve prepared, the way we’ve trained, the way we’ve played in patches has been really good.’ Jos Buttler added in the post-match press conference.
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There were questions on not only deciding to chase on that surface, but also on not throwing the ball to Moeen who could have used the dryness of the track, and the big dimensions of the ground.
‘Not at the toss. I don’t think that was the difference between the two sides. We thought long and hard about selection, about whether we kept the same balance that we’d been playing with that had been working well, or did we need four seamers on that particular wicket.’ England captain Jos Buttler reflected. ‘I think that was a really tough call that we made and we ended up sticking with what we had.’
England has a fair bit of time to think about their T20I team, before their next T20I series which is at home against Australia in September.
