‘Whichever line-up we had, we just weren’t good enough today’ – Jos Buttler on England’s defeat against Afghanistan in ODI World Cup 2023

The defending champions recently witnessed a major upset in their third match of the ODI World Cup 2023 as they were defeated by Afghanistan by 69 runs. England’s performance in the World Cup 2023 has been below ours as they have now lost two matches in the tournament, first against New Zealand and second against Afghanistan. 

As per the team’s captain Jos Buttler, England failed to understand the type of game they should have played on the pitch of the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Delhi. Instead of being defensive and presenting statements in favour of the team, Jos Buttler appreciated Afghanistan’s performance and openly called England’s performance to be bad in the post-match press conference. 

Jos Buttler on England’s performance against Afghanistan

“Look, we always want to play positive and be aggressive and some days you don’t play as well as you want to. 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”, said Jos Buttler in the post-match conference.

“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,” added Jos Buttler. 

“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 said. 

“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,” said Buttler.