England’s captain Jos Buttler admitted that his players should feel the brunt of losing their second match of the T20 World Cup against Ireland. The Irish team was able to stun the tournament’s favorite on Wednesday at the MCG as they won by five runs (DLS method).
Ireland was skittled out for 157 in 19.2 after their captain Andre Balbirnie and Lorcan Tucker added a fine partnership of 82 runs. In fact, at one stage it looked like Ireland could go on to post 180 runs on the board but England’s bowlers made a solid comeback in the second phase of the innings.
However, England kept losing wickets at regular intervals and struggled their way in the run-chase. Jos Buttler and Alex Hales were dismissed early and when the rain came pouring down in Melbourne, England was five short of the par score on DLS.
“I think we should let it hurt, to be honest,” said Buttler at the post-match press conference. “I think days like today are really, really disappointing, and you’ve got to feel that. There’s no point in saying let’s sweep it under the carpet and move on.
“I think we’ve got to reflect — we’ve got to do it quickly obviously with a game soon after, but today should hurt.”
Meanwhile, the match was nicely set up for a thrilling finish as England required 53 runs off the final 33 balls with Moeen Ali on 24 runs off 12 balls. However, rain played killjoy for England.
“It was getting quite heavy. Of course, we’d love to stay on and try to hit a couple of sixes if we could, but it got heavy. I think the game was lost before that point. I think we were a long way short of where we needed to be right throughout the game, and Ireland deserved to win.”
Given the match situation, Ireland players tried to slow the game as they were ahead on the DLS. However, Buttler feels they were lagging behind in the game ever before that.
“Yeah, it’s certainly something, whether it’s gamesmanship. I knew the rain was coming and could slow the game up. I think we had lost the game before that point. As I mentioned, we had all the things we needed in our favour. If we were ahead, they wouldn’t have been slowing the game down. So I think we should take responsibility ourselves, and we should never let it get to that kind of situation.”
England will take on arch-rivals Australia at the MCG on Friday and it will be a must-win match for both teams.
