Published: Jan 26, 2015, 03:42 PM (IST)
Edited: Jan 27, 2015, 12:57 PM (IST)
Paul Collingwood opined that England had been perennial underachievers in all previous World Cups. England’s second highest run-getter in One-Day Internationals (ODIs) believed there wasn’t one particular reason for England’s World Cup woes.
Collingwood felt England must face up to reality that they have failed capitalise on their World Cup opportunities having qualified for two semi finals and three finals in the first five World Cups. According to the Official International Cricket Council Website (ICC) Collingwood was quoted as saying,
“For the talent that we’ve had, you have to say England has underachieved in the last five ICC World Cricket Cups. It’s really hard to pinpoint what it has been that has made us underperform but, having reached two semi-finals and three finals in the first five ICC Cricket World Cups and not doing anything like that in the last five, it’s something we have to face.”
Collingwood sighted England’s orthodox style of play and lack of imagination in their ODI cricket as one of the reasons for their consistent failure in World Cups. The former all-rounder opined,
“There are lots of reasons for it but the one key thing we’ve done consistently is play ‘normal’ cricket and when I say that I mean conservative cricket. If you haven’t got some kind of mystery spin or extreme pace or anything like that, then you’ve got to try something different. In the past, Sri Lanka won a World Cup by coming out and doing something completely different that took everybody by surprise. But whenever I’ve been with England, everything had to go perfectly well for us to beat the top sides consistently.”
The former England captain felt most other teams were better equipped to winning the event in the three ICC World Cup’s he was a part of the England side and that England were never really sure about their best combination at the marquee event,
“I played in the last three ICC Cricket World Cups and I never felt we were never really that close to really doing something if I’m totally honest. It’s a disappointing thing to say but we had to have everything going our way to beat the best sides,” said Collingwood.
“You only have to look at Australia. They were always a settled team which knew its roles, whereas we were going into a tournament unsure of what our best line-up was. There have been so many World Cups where we’ve been wondering what our best team is.
Australia knew what the best team was and because of that their roles were always refined and defined and they knew what each other had to do. There was no rocket science about it and they just had better match-winners. But we don’t get a brand of cricket early on and think ‘right we’re going to stick with this and this is how we’re going to play’ and it just tends to be done at the last minute all the time,” he further added
Collingwood Also felt Ashes series preceding World Cups drained the players out completely and that they were generally mentally jaded going into previous tournaments,
“The ICC Cricket World Cups were tough because we always came in off the back end of an Ashes series. You’re already drained by the time you’re going in. You’ve been touring Australia for four months, you get a 10-day break and you’re across to a World Cup.
We took confidence from beating Australia in the Tri-series in 2007 but you’re going into a World Cup and it felt like another series and that’s not how it should feel. You should be mentally fresh for a World Cup and that’s why they’ve changed the fixtures around now,” Collingwood concluded
