With back-to-back defeats in the World Cup 2023, the defending champion England is set to come up with new plans for the upcoming match.
Moeen Ali ahead of Sri Lanka WC clash
England suffered one of its biggest defeats in the match against South Africa on October 21. The defending champions have played four matches so far and won only one match against Bangladesh.
After suffering two consecutive defeats, England is planning to return to the field with a new plan for the match against Sri Lanka. They worked out the renewed plan against South Africa at Wankhede stadium but it backfired as they lost with a 229-run difference.
The plan was to drop underperforming allrounders from the playing 11 which included Liam Livingstone and Sam Curran. But it didn’t work out in the match against the strong opponent South Africa.
The conditions in India helped other teams to succeed in the bowling department to earn them success. On this occasion, allrounder Moeen Ali spoke ahead of the match against Sri Lanka.
“I think it was down to just a different way because we haven’t been playing well. And we wanted our best six batters to obviously try and score the runs, or rely on them to score the runs. And chasing 400, It’s always difficult. We ended up not bowling that well, and South Africa batting amazingly well. So obviously it didn’t work,” he said of the South Africa game.
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if it changes and we go back to what we’ve been doing for the last, I don’t know how many years. Yeah, it’s just one of those things that didn’t work on that day. Obviously, we took Mumbai’s wicket into consideration with that. It just didn’t work,” he added.
“I think if I do play it could go for a few runs because it’s quite small and a flat wicket, but it’s also good for batting. It’s one of those grounds where scoring is quick and batting deep makes a big difference. If I get the nod, then I’m really looking forward to playing. And I grind out, I play franchise cricket, and it’s a great place to play. It’s a great venue. And yeah, I’ll be pretty excited,” conceded Ali.
“I wish I was a leggy sometimes as well. It’s one of those places where you can go for a lot of runs, but you can also pick a wicket. If you get a big score on the board, then most of the time, leggies get a lot of wickets. Or spinners get a lot of wickets when you get a big score on the board because the opposition needs to come out playing shots and that works in your favor.
But If I bowl well if I bat well, whatever, or Rash [Adil Rashid] bowls well, then he’ll get wickets. I don’t think Zampa getting wickets will give anyone confidence because I’ve seen other leggies bowl well here before so It’s just if you bowl well, you got a good chance,” he concluded.
England and Sri Lanka will be facing each other on October 26 at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
