What’s gone wrong with England during this World Cup?

Having lost four of their five matches already, defending champions England are staring at an early World Cup exit.

Defending champions England’s World Cup 2023 campaign is dangling by a thread. In fact, for all intents and purposes, they are all but mathematically out of the Cricket World Cup following yet another debacle in the field, this time against Sri Lanka in Bengaluru.

The 2019 world champions were bowled out for a paltry total of 156 and had no answers to the questions asked by Lahiru Kumara and co as six players got out on single digit scores. 157 was never going to be a defendable target anyway but Sri Lanka made quick work of it with wonderful unbeaten half-centuries from Pathum Nissanka (77*) and Sadeera Samarawickrama (65*). They stitched a 137-run partnership for the third wicket to secure a monumental eight-wicket victory and revive their own semi-final hopes.

Although they are officially yet to be knocked out of the competition, England are at joint-bottom of the table along with the Netherlands and Bangladesh. Not only will they need to win all of their remaining four games by a huge margins to have any hopes of qualifying, they will also need several other results to go in their favour, which is a tall ask to say the very least.

But how did England get here?

Before the match in Bengaluru, perhaps their best batter Joe Root touched on the fact that 50-over cricket is no longer given precedence back home. He was not looking to make excuses for their sorry title defence but brought to light what had already been a lingering sense among many.

His opinions were echoed by head coach Matthew Mott who suggested that their preparations had been “rushed” as none of the players in their World Cup squad was able to play a List A game between March and September, let alone any ODIs. "It would have been nice to have a proper run-in," he said.

The numbers also agree. Between 2015 and 2019, England played 88 ODI matches and used 34 players - 12 of them played more than 50% of all the games. Between 2019 and 2023, however, they’ve played only 42 ODIs, using 44 players during that time, out of which only played in at least half of those games. Jason Roy, who made the most appearances for England during this World Cup cycle, wasn’t even included in the World Cup squad.

"It would have been nice to [have] a six-month period where you slowly work things through as a group. But that's just not how it is at the minute, and that's not how we get to play our cricket as an England player, so you've just got to be adaptable," Root had added.

England have played a lot of Test cricket since their 2019 World Cup victory on home soil. They have played 56 Tests during that period with Australia and India together in second place with only 39 each. This, added to the fact, that two consecutive T20 World Cups were held in 2021 and 2022 as well as the rise of The Hundred and an ever-expanding IPL schedule, meant that many of the multi-format players were rested for most ODIs.

Even Root himself has played only 19 ODIs between the 2019 Cricket World Cup final and the opening game of this year’s tournament. The lack of prioritizing this format is also hurting domestic cricket where England’s white-ball players often have to choose between the One Day Cup and The Hundred, held during the same window.

"There's talk of whether this format is relevant anymore anyway, in international cricket," Root said. "Whether that gets changed, I don't know. Who knows how things will move in the future? But whether it's domestically or internationally, I don't think we play enough of it if we're going to continue to look to compete in World Cups."

England’s persistent problems during this World Cup have as much to do with the future of this format going forward as their own shortcomings in the field. They are unlikely to prioritise 50-over cricket again anytime soon, with the changing landscape of a T20-dominated global game.