What went wrong for England in the Champions Trophy?

Is it simply a symptom of bigger problems?

England return home from the Champions Trophy with no points from their three games, following defeats to Australia and Afghanistan, and a thrashing in their final group game at the hands of South Africa.

This follows a disastrous white ball tour of India where they lost 7-1 (4-1 in T20s and 3-0 in ODIs), making it a real winter of discontent for England’s supporters, who also had to endure a clean sweep defeat to Australia in the Women’s Ashes.

Inevitably, this has led to an abundance of speculation both in the media and on social media about the reasons for these dreadful results, and in this analysis, I am going to try to cut through the hyperbole and give a considered opinion as to where the issues stem from, and how they can start to be addressed.

Having posted on X yesterday that I would be doing this analysis, I got overwhelmed by questions (thank you!) and I have accumulated so many of these into this analysis, and tried to answer as many as possible without going into specific questions individually.

At this stage I wanted to address one clear area - I am not going to be calling out any players. The players selected are excellent players but perhaps are often shoehorned into roles which don’t help them show their skillset to the maximum. I will confidently argue that England’s players are far better than the results which they have obtained in white ball cricket, both at this Champions Trophy but also over the last few years.

Many of the results and performances are not the players fault. I know a lot of the players personally and they are good human beings who will be devastated about how this tournament has played out, and will be desperate to put things right when they next get the opportunity to do so.

However, this isn’t any attempt by me to belittle how hurt England’s supporters are from recent tournaments and series in white ball cricket. This stuff is important - fans emotions are dictated by the decisions taken by England’s management. Not just that, but players careers are dictated by these decisions too - it simply is not good enough to do things on a whim, gut feel or an illogical ideology which isn’t evidence based.

This neatly leads on to where I think a main focus of the problems comes from - illogical ideologies which I see no evidence of aligning with historically successful teams.

For example, there is very little evidence that a battery of right-arm pacers bowling with little variety creates success in white ball cricket. Actually, the drivers of success for bowling groups aren’t far from the opposite, and this could also be said of playing tournaments in the Subcontinent, where points of difference, guile (and high quality spin) should be more effective. In addition, I would question whether some of the batters selected, and their approach, align to how successful ODI players construct innings.

So why did England take this selection approach with their bowling? Why did their batters take so many high risk shot options? Do the players know that these are issues which they need to work on? These were common themes among questions which I have been asked on X when I said that I was going to write this piece, so it clearly deserves thorough discussion.

Because so many decisions taken in recent years run contrary to how successful white ball cricket teams are constructed, I am left with little explanation except to consider that this is a management issue, and as mentioned, stemming from illogical ideologies which aren’t evidence-based. Importantly, will these decisions improve in the future?

Unfortunately for England supporters, I’m sceptical for several reasons. The first stems from recent white ball performance records, and the highly probable unwillingness to u-turn and accept their mistakes. I would definitely give credit if they did adapt, but I somewhat doubt it will happen.

I think Brendon McCullum has a little more credit in the bank than Rob Key. McCullum has been a relatively successful franchise coach before, and has done a generally positive job for England as a Test coach (despite winning four Tests and losing six against Australia and India combined - similarly resourced teams at the top of the international game), although definitely has a clear ideology which can be challenged in some areas by historical evidence.

However, England are 19-29 (with two no-results) in 50 ODIs since Rob Key took the Managing Director of England Men’s Cricket role, and are 28-25 (with three no-results) in 56 T20Is - a combined white ball record of 47 wins and 54 losses (46.5% wins) during his tenure. It has to be noted that this is a marked drop-off in results compared the few years before his appointment, when England were arguably the world’s best, and most feared, white ball team.

Further, England are 14-20 in 34 completed white ball internationals (41.2% wins) since the start of 2024, so it could be reasonably argued that things are getting even worse. I daren’t split this further into their record against Australia and India combined in this period, because it comes with a health warning.

The question is, who puts the high level decision makers such as Key under pressure? It doesn’t appear to be the media, many of whom are friends with him from his time working for Sky Sports. For sports teams to be successful, there needs to be a high degree of accountability, so who is going to take them to task for these results and the decisions taken which have generated these outcomes?

In addition, who is going to raise the subject of a number of players being given big-money central contracts and then barely or rarely playing? Some of these have generated, or now generate, zero return on investment and represent about as much value as the PCB ‘mentors’, which we’ve discussed before.

So, my clear point is this - can these decision makers be trusted to make a rebuild? Are they qualified to do that rebuild? Is a full reset needed instead?

Until England create a clear, evidence-based blueprint of success with full buy-in from all decision makers which aligns to how successful squads are constructed, feeding into specific format selection and talent ID, I can’t see anything significantly changing.

However, to answer the volume of similar questions about a number of subjects which I received from people on X, and to reinforce the points made about what I consider to be strategic mistakes, I am going to go through some specific areas relating to the team building.

Why did Jos Buttler bat at number 6? I cannot come up with a coherent explanation for this decision. In my view he should be opening, with either Phil Salt left out or if Salt plays, Ben Duckett moving to three - he is an excellent player of spin, so this could have worked.

Why did England pick so many right-arm pace bowlers? Again, difficult to answer with any logic. I have a feeling that they have ‘their group’ of players which align to their ideology which they’d prefer to take from one format to another.

The other issue related to this runs a little deeper. Apart from the injury-prone Jofra Archer, the England pace bowling group across formats are not in demand at the IPL. This is a bigger problem than many people may understand - basically, they are not perceived to be good enough by decision makers at teams in the biggest franchise tournament in the world.

My question is whether this lack of high quality bowlers is a structural problem due to poor talent ID from England’s management and their encouragement to bowl a specific way with high pace and often back of a length.

Having done this analysis in T20, there’s a correlation between success and the percentage teams bowl certain lines and lengths, and far less of a correlation between success and high pace and bowling the lengths which England tend to prefer.

I do worry that a large group of bowlers may have their careers negatively affected by what I perceive to be bad advice from the management. Control is more valuable than a couple more mph on the speed gun.

Why did England only pick one specialist spinner? It’s a valid question. Adil Rashid has been fantastic for them over the years, but is now 37 years of age and will need replacing in the medium-term. A white ball tournament in the subcontinent seems the perfect time to give a young spinner game time in a pressurized environment, but it didn’t happen. Rehan Ahmed was left out of the squad initially and only came in when Brydon Carse was injured after being close to bowled into the ground over recent months. Again, this hints at issues with poor decision-making from the management.

Given the dynamics of the key players in the England set-up, I do feel that England need a spinner to contribute with the bat, so the likes of Rehan or the jettisoned Liam Dawson looked worthy of consideration. I’m genuinely not sure what more Dawson needed to do over the last couple of years to get picked in any format of cricket for England.

In the Champions Trophy and in India over the winter, why did England have so many issues playing high risk shots, with low control and struggle against opposition spinners? In my view, this all comes down to questionable shot options and hurried innings construction. Having said that, a lot of the time it’s not the fault of the players selected - they are both playing their natural game and also playing the style which they are encouraged to play.

This is merely the symptom of a bigger issue, which is the inability of the decision-makers to understand the type of player required to succeed in the various formats of the game. ‘What works’ in ODIs is different to T20Is. Different types of players (for example in ODIs, low-risk but solid run accumulation at around a run a ball in the middle overs) and adaptability with innings construction is required. I’m not sure some of the players in the current group have that skillset for ODIs, but that’s not their fault - they might just be more suited to T20s instead.

This subject is related to the next few questions as well.

Did England’s choice of replacement players show confused squad planning? In my view, absolutely. Tom Banton (keeper/top order batter) in for Jacob Bethell (middle order batter and LA orthodox spinner and gun fielder) is not like for like, despite their primary role being as a batter. Rehan Ahmed (spin all-rounder) for Brydon Carse (pace all-rounder) isn’t like for like either, although it could be defended to some degree if the reason given was that they were adapting to additional knowledge of conditions after the tournament started.

Is the clash between the domestic 50 over tournament in England and The Hundred making 50 over success more difficult for England? There’s a lot to unpack here. Obviously it doesn’t help, and I’ve long been in favour of playing the 50 over domestic comp at the start of April and pushing red ball cricket a little further back into the calendar. Then, only the players at the IPL would miss the 50 over domestic tournament.

However, it’s also worth making the point that many top players for other countries rarely, if at all, play domestic cricket either. For example, the last time Virat Kohli played in the Vijay Hazare Trophy was in February 2010 - 15 years ago. He doesn’t seem to have a problem adapting to the ODI format, and that’s in part because his natural game and innings construction is very much suited to a slightly longer white-ball format.

Some people who are ‘anti Hundred’ conveniently for them use this scheduling clash in English domestic cricket as a stick to beat The Hundred. If you drew a Venn diagram between people using this as the reason why England perform badly in ODIs and people who are ‘anti Hundred’ then it would basically just be one big circle. They may not have a coherent explanation as to why England have declined in T20s as well, as their logic implies England should have improved in T20 having established a new domestic short-format tournament.

As said, my view is that a lack of 50 over cricket domestically for players considered for England doesn’t help. Having said that, it’s not an insurmountable problem with good data analysis. For example, when looking at establishing a batting group, an astute selector could look at T20 shot options to determine the players who have the skillsets to thrive in ODIs. Is it a coincidence that the two batters who have thrived for England in the Champions Trophy, Ben Duckett and Joe Root, take less high risk shot options than some other batters? I think not.

Why do England have such a crossover of players who play multiple formats? To me, this makes no sense. Anyone who has got this far will understand that I have consistently talked about the different skills required to succeed in each format, and that diversification is only getting bigger.

Furthermore, workload management is a big issue. Is it just bad luck that Mark Wood and Brydon Carse got injured? I doubt it. Workload management is not just for pace bowlers (although it’s obviously most focused towards them) but for all players, because playing three formats surely will take its toll over the years.

With this in mind, it makes sense to me to have squads of players who are able to consistently play their best formats, as opposed to just picking from one pool of players playing multiple formats.

Who should be England’s next white ball captain? Really difficult to answer. I don’t see an outstanding candidate from the current squad. If I had to pick someone from the current group I would lean towards Joe Root, but I wasn’t a huge buyer of him from a tactical perspective when he was Test captain.

In my view, the best tacticians are outside the squad. Out of all the captains which I’ve worked with, Sam Billings is tactically the best by an absolute mile. It’s not even close. He also has a good career 50-over record. James Vince is also well respected as a captain on the circuit, and has had success in that role. Both are 33 years of age, so won’t necessarily be long-term solutions, but could do a very effective role assuming that the management give them the scope to make decisions to the best of their ability. I also rate Tom Abell’s leadership.

Who would you pick if you were selecting England’s 50 over team? I get these type of questions so much, and basically this is impossible to answer, primarily because I believe in a squad game rather than a ‘best XI’. It is vital to have a squad who coherently fit together, as opposed to ‘eleven ones’.

Conditions and opposition are important nuances here. I can remember Ed Smith talking about ‘destigmatising being dropped’ when he was in a similar role to Rob Key, and I do agree with this. It’s a squad game and it’s absolutely fine to slightly alter selection based on various situational dynamics.

Which players would you have in the 50 over squad who aren’t currently in it? Basically, see above. But I will say that I think Sam Hain is totally suited to ODI cricket, with his innings construction and shot options, and his lack of international appearances in this format is one of the biggest selection tragedies in modern cricket. The likes of Sam Curran and Liam Dawson could potentially help with team balance in certain team structures. As mentioned above, Billings, Vince and Abell bring leadership. These are a few names to consider.

Concluding, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into England’s white ball malaise, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Anyone interested in discussing how I can help their organisation with strategic management, data-driven analysis and long-term planning can get in touch at sportsanalyticsadvantage@gmail.com.