Follow UsEngland’s white-ball team is in quite a lot of trouble after facing first-round exits from two ICC ODI tournaments in a row — the ODI World Cup in 2023 in India and now the 2025 Champions Trophy in Pakistan.
Both tournaments saw a similar pattern of underperformance. The batting attack lacked a strategy to maximise the 50 overs, and the bowling attack looked toothless despite having high-pace bowlers.
“We weren't good enough across, obviously very disappointed,” coach Brendon McCullum said after the seven-wicket loss against South Africa in England’s last game of the tournament.
“We had high hopes of being able to finish the tournament with a bit of a bang, but we're very poor and we've got a lot of work to do.
“We'll put our thinking caps on over the next few weeks and start to try and navigate our way through what an improvement looks like across our white ball cricket and make sure we try and be pretty thorough with that and work out a way that we can get ourselves back to where we should be.”
McCullum added that the three-match ODI series in India was a really good opportunity for England to be well-prepared for the tournament. However, they failed to learn from their comprehensive defeat against India in the bilateral, and similar patterns of error were repeated in the Champions Trophy.
“I felt India was actually really good preparation for us, even though we obviously got beaten quite comfortably there,” the Kiwi coach of England admitted.
“I thought that was as good a preparation as you could have coming into a major tournament and obviously we had our chance in those first couple but what we saw tonight was probably an example of why we're out of the tournament.
“We weren't able to withstand the pressure when it was applied and we weren't able to navigate our way through and I guess again I said to you yesterday that I felt that we lacked confidence and I thought today was another example of that.
“We’re going to find out pretty quickly ways to be able to make sure that our team walks out there a lot more confident than what we are at the moment.”
With Jos Buttler having resigned from the captain’s job, McCullum also has his task out when he returns home from the Pakistan tour.
“I'll get home in the next couple of days and then start to think about, and start having some conversations with Rob Key and the guys at the ECB about who is the right person for us to put in that position of white ball captain,” the England head coach said.