The stands of the Narendra Modi Stadium have emptied out by the time Adil Rashid clears his front leg and skies a short ball through to Josh Inglis, finally confirming England’s group-stage exit. This is the way England’s World Cup ends: not with a bang but a whimper; their double world champions reduced to hollow men.
Nobody saw this coming. Even the handful of pundits who predicted England would fail to qualify for the semi-finals could not have imagined the extent of the implosion: a great team reduced to a week-long scrap for seventh place with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Netherlands, looking to avoid further humiliation.
“We’re not defending anything,” Jos Buttler, their captain, told journalists on the first floor of the Gujarat Cricket Association clubhouse in Ahmedabad, the day before England’s opening-night defeat to New Zealand. His point was that they could not rely on past glories, but the words haunted him over the next five weeks.
Exactly a month later, standing on the outfield of the same venue, Buttler wore the beleaguered, dejected look that has become the image of his World Cup. “It’s certainly a low point,” he said. “As a captain, to be stood in this position, when you arrive in India with very high hopes, is incredibly tough… we haven’t done ourselves justice.”
