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Monday, 28 March 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
(Reuters) - A television shot of James Anderson watching from the stands as England toiled unavailingly against a superior Sri Lanka side on Saturday told the story of his team’s World Cup campaign.
Anderson bowled brilliantly during England’s triumphant Ashes campaign. But the decision to leave him out of the final two World Cup matches was an act of mercy and an acknowledgment that the team’s leading strike bowler had nothing left to give.
Nor, in the end, did England who now fly home after they were overwhelmed by 10 wickets in their Colombo quarter-final. England’s World Cup campaign was derailed before it started by a brutal post-Ashes schedule which included two Twenty20 games and a seven-match one-day series against Australia.
Four players had to be replaced after the team arrived in India and others, notably Anderson, were physically and emotionally spent.
In this context, England’s exit from the tournament at the start of knockout stages was no disgrace. A successful Ashes defence was the country’s priority over the English winter and Andrew Strauss’s men retained the trophy that really mattered.
“Jimmy has had a very tough and long winter,” Strauss said in his post-tournament assessment on Saturday.
“I think he got to a stage where mentally he was pretty burnt out. And you can’t blame him for that.
“He has given everything he possibly can to the side over the course of the six months. He has been our outstanding performer, and he has run in time and time again. I think he reached the end of the road and needed a break.” A fit, rested and fully focused England team would still not have won the World Cup.
With the honourable exceptions of Strauss himself, whose 158 in the tie against India was one of the great England one-day innings, and the phenomenally consistent Jonathan Trott the batsman did not score enough runs.
Kevin Pietersen’s departure through injury after a promising start in his new role as an one-day opener deprived the team of the one player who could take the game away from an opposing attack. The bowling lacked the variations the sub-continental teams produce as a matter of course.
“We were not good enough in the one-dayers in either Australia or this World Cup,” Strauss said.
“If you look at sides that have done well in this tournament, they have got a lot of variety in their bowling attack.
“We haven’t got as much variety as them. They have got batsmen that have consistently made hundreds. Again we haven’t done that well enough. These are the stark facts in front of us, we can still go back and get better, no doubt about it. That’s what we will be trying to do in the coming weeks.”
Unlike some previous England teams, Strauss’s team competed until the end. A proposed realignment of the Ashes schedule to avoid a clash with the 2015 World Cup in Australia will be a clear bonus for whoever leads the side in four years’ time.
Strauss said it was too early to discuss the future for either himself or his team.
“We are going to have to sit down with the selectors, and look back at the tournament, and plot a way forward for both the test side and the one-day side,” he said.
“We are going to have to think about what the best options are. It’s something I haven’t thought about and now is not the time to think about it either.”
