New Delhi [India], October 31 : Former cricketer Mark Butcher believes England isn't learning anything from its shambolic run in the ODIs and needs to show more humility to recover from their torrid run.
New Zealand pummelled the Three Lions in the second ODI to take an unassailable lead in the three-match series. In the series opener, England crumbled to 56/6 before captain Harry Brook came to the rescue with a record-shattering 135(101), but it wasn't enough to save his side from falling to a four-wicket defeat.
In the second ODI, Blair Tickner's sizzling four-wicket haul dismantled England's batting unit, forcing them to crumble to 175 in 36 overs. With hardly enough runs on the board, England's star-studded attack perished as the tourists succumbed to a five-wicket defeat.
"Go harder? I don't know. I'm not entirely sure how they could have done that given the way that the ball was moving around," Butcher said while speaking on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast.
"Perhaps in those circumstances, that might have been the right approach as Brook showed himself. When the ball is nipping around all over the place, then chancing your arm is often a better way of doing it than sticking it out when the ball is moving all over the shop. However, that was not the case in the second game," Butcher added.
England's horror show in the 50-over format began to take shape during the 2023 ODI World Cup in India. Since then, England has lost 17 of the 25 ODIs, including the 10 they lost out of 14 this year. Out of the 10 defeats, three came during their catastrophic Champions Trophy campaign, which saw them bow out of the tournament in the group stage.
Jos Buttler stepped down as the white-ball skipper, and Brook was handed the captaincy mantle. During Brook's maiden ODI captaincy, England swept the series 3-0 against the West Indies. But since then, they have notched just one out of the five appearances.
"To fall short batting your 50 overs by the margin that they did is inexcusable really. It goes for all types of cricket, successful teams are smart in the way they approach matches on an individual basis rather than having a set idea that this is what we're going to do no matter what," Butcher said.
"It doesn't appear that there's any sort of learning going on at the moment, given the paucity of results. I don't think that there is a massive amount of trouble in terms of the personnel being picked; by and large, they're the best that we've got. Therefore, a little bit of smarts and humility might be the way forward in terms of approach, and realising that not every game is a coconut shy and you can't go out and smash the crap out of it. Sometimes you have to give the opposition bowlers a little bit of respect," Butcher added.
With the series out of grasp, England will look to find some winning momentum in the third ODI on Saturday in Wellington.