Jos Buttler’s limited-overs captaincy hit a new nadir at its final hurdle. Quite frankly, it is hard to recall a worse England one-day team than this and that’s because statistically there hasn’t been one for almost a quarter of a century.
This seventh successive defeat, making it 23 in 35 matches for Buttler since succeeding Eoin Morgan permanently, represents the most in a row since 11 spanned a nine-month period between 2000-01.
England had come into it intent on sending Buttler off in style, having argued that a failure to seize the key moments against Australia and Afghanistan had led to their elimination from the Champions Trophy.
This, though, was utter humiliation. When David Miller emphasised the gulf between Buttler’s side and a functional but unspectacular South Africa, settling things by ploughing his second ball into the sight screen for six, a whopping 195 deliveries – almost a third of the contest’s allotment – remained unused.
It was the first time in a global tournament in which they had participated in more than one match that England had gone winless.
‘We weren’t good enough across all facets of the game and we are very disappointed. We had high hopes of finishing the tournament with a bit of a bang but we were very poor and we’ve got a lot of work to do,’ admitted head coach Brendon McCullum, who added that England would now consider all options in a rebuild, including the possibility of three separate captains across the formats.
England were thrashed by seven wickets as Jos Buttler’s ODI captaincy came to an end
South Africa’s Lungi Ngidi celebrates after he took the wicket of departing captain Buttler
Brendon McCullum revealed England could use three different captains moving forward across formats after a woeful run of results
‘We’ll put our thinking caps on over the next few weeks and start to try and navigate our way through what improvement looks like across our white-ball cricket. Obviously, we had our chances in those first couple but what we saw tonight was probably an example of why we’re out of the tournament.’
Misery loves company, as they say. Here all but Jofra Archer indulged in it, overcoming a wide-ridden first over to send down a testing new-ball spell bearing two wickets, after he second top scored with 25 in England’s anaemic 179 all out.
To think it had been South Africa who turned up off colour: Temba Bavuma, their captain, ruled out through illness along with Tony de Zorzi. Later, had to overcome the loss of Bavuma’s stand-in Aidan Markham to a hamstring injury while fielding.
They did not require a full complement of players, however, so pitiful was England’s response to even a modicum of pressure.
All the hallmarks of their other defeats in this eight-team competition were there.
The departures of Phil Salt and Jamie Smith in the power play, both top-edging pulls off man-of-the-match Marco Jansen, took their respective tallies of balls faced to 25 and 29.
Salt takes up a £1million Indian Premier League contract later this month, having given a dime a dozen value to his ODI innings here while the decision to experiment with Surrey wicketkeeper Smith at No 3, a position he had occupied just once before in his career, was crass.
Backed by some brilliant catching – the pick of which was the giant’s Jansen’s overhead grab at long-on to dismiss Harry Brook, whose winter began with a triple Test hundred here in Pakistan but ended with three cheap dismissals to spin – South Africa sliced through a line-up devoid of confidence.
England’s Jamie Overton and Buttler during their side’s defeat against South Africa
Buttler plays a shot as his side were beaten by South Africa to end their torrid tournament
South Africa players celebrate after the wicket of England’s Adil Rashid to end the first innings
When Liam Livingstone was suckered by a looping Keshav Maharaj delivery – a comedic way to mark what must be the end for him in this form of international cricket – England were 114 for six.
Twenty-five years ago, an England win here at the National Stadium gained infamy for being sealed in near darkness. This time, it appeared to be hurtling towards its conclusion before the floodlights were turned on.
That such ignominy was avoided was partly down to Buttler signing off with a boundary-less, joyless vigil of 21 from 43 balls, but South Africa’s own middle order played much more like themselves, Heinrich Klaasen and Rassie van der Dussen hitting half-centuries in a 127-run stand before Miller’s blow took them into the semi-finals as group winners.
