Jos Buttler admits England "outplayed" by Afghanistan in Cricket World Cup loss
England are facing World Cup humiliation unless they find their best form in the aftermath of a shock defeat to Afghanistan.
Skipper Jos Buttler admitted the 69-run loss, a first ever defeat to the Afghans, was a ‘big setback’ to their trophy retention ambitions and a tough result to take.
And now they have to try and find a way to bounce back against the tournament’s early pace setters South Africa.
“It's a big setback obviously,” said Buttler. “It's not been the way we wanted to start the competition, but this is the situation we find ourselves in and we're going to have to play some of our best cricket moving forward.
“It is a tough loss to take, but we haven’t played well enough. We were put under lots of pressure and Afghanistan outplayed us.
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“It is about execution. We were not at the level we wanted to be consistently enough. We have got to let this defeat hurt and let it sink in.
“We have guys who've come back from tough situations and shown a lot of character and resilience, so we'll get around each other and pick each other up, dust ourselves down and go again.”
It appears inevitable that Ben Stokes will return to the side, while the form of the likes of Chris Woakes is a concern for Buttler, who also admitted to reading the conditions wrong at the toss.
“The conditions didn’t quite play out how we thought and the dew didn’t come down and play the part we expected it to, but we just weren’t good enough,” he added.
Afghanistan’s players were all smiles after the game as too their coach, former England batter Jonathan Trott who said: “This is a significant win and it’s very pleasing with a lot of confidence that will come from this. It'll have a knock-on effect as to just what Afghanistan cricket can achieve.”
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