A 33-run defeat at the hands of Australia in Ahmedabad sealed the fate of the defending champions, who now have no hopes of qualifying for the semi-finals after suffering their sixth defeat in seven matches in the tournament.
Buttler holed out cheaply to Cameron Green bowling Adam Zampa, who scored 3 for 21 to be named Man of the Match as Australia moved one win away from a place in the last 16. Buttler’s dismissal compounded a torrid tournament in which he scored 43, 20, 9, 15, 8, 10 and now 1: a total of 106 runs at 15.14 off 113 balls.
“I think it was the right shot, the execution was obviously wrong,” Buttler said in the post-match presentation. “I want to be positive and face the game. I felt it was time to try to give something back to the opponent.
“But yes, I think my own form has been the biggest concern. Coming into the tournament I felt in a great place for not having played as well as I can and in such a fundamental role as I play for the team, my poor thing.” “The performance with the bat has really hurt us.”
England have two more matches, against the Netherlands, with whom they are now competing for a place in the 2025 Champions Trophy, and Pakistan.
Their demise has been dramatic, with the thrilling 2019 home triumph in some ways still fresh in the mind because of that memorable final. However, it is also now a distant memory, given that the uncertainty with which England played in India bears little resemblance to the self-assured attitude that has been a hallmark of England’s white-ball cricket for most of one of each. .
“It’s certainly a low point,” Buttler said. “I’ve had a few, but yes, definitely as a captain, being in this position when you come to India with high hopes is incredibly difficult, incredibly disappointing and yes, it hurts a lot.
“We certainly haven’t done ourselves justice. Coming into the tournament, we figured we could really go for it and push whoever it was to the end.
“It’s incredibly difficult to reach those heights, absolutely. Everyone knows how much hard work goes into that. And even when you fall short, there’s a lot of hard work that goes into that. So we feel like we’ve let ourselves down. We’ve let the people down.” people at home, the people who support us through thick and thin, and you carry that on your own shoulders.
“I’m disappointed as a player and we really haven’t been good enough in this tournament from the start,” Moeen told Sky Sports. “Today showed the lack of confidence in the team. I thought we were a little bit better tonight and we had the best conditions and we know we should have won this game, but these things happen in cricket.
“I think we probably tried to do too much and, as players in particular, we tried to be very aggressive and then we tried to absorb a little bit of pressure, but we just couldn’t do it. Even tonight, every time we tried, we were in a position where the one where we were, ‘okay, we’re doing well here’, we just lost two wickets quickly and then we have to try to rebuild again and then we lost two wickets again.
“It’s a little schoolboy mistake, but these things happen when you don’t have confidence as a team. And we can’t keep saying we don’t have confidence. We have to do something about it. We’ve tried. “I think we’ve tried as a group of players to do that. And sometimes you become a little internal as a person on the team and it’s never that good for the team.”
It is this lack of trust that Moeen believes has led to poor execution.
“As a group of players and with management, we’ve tried to say, at times, ‘let’s go out and play our way,’ and sometimes when we lost the game, [said] “Let’s go out there and be tougher, let’s try harder,” something we’ve always tried to do, but we just haven’t had the confidence,” he said. “The lack of faith in the team… it’s something to say, but then go out and do it . I don’t think we did.
“The lack of runs, the lack of wickets, not playing as well as we know we can… when you don’t get runs as an individual, you get a little bit ashamed of your own performance, and you can get a bit of an internal feeling, and I think We’ve done it. In the past, I think we just stuck our chest out and said ‘guys, I’m going out’ and tried to take it, and we just did it. “I haven’t.”