Whatever happened in the last few weeks for England was dreadful. Probably worse than just that. The more they pushed to mend the broken, the worse it became. They would not think twice about erasing it from their minds if given a chance. England have not exactly been in a form that anyone could envy, but Brendon McCullum’s signing for white-ball coaching was seen as the first step to revolution even by the most realistic minds.
However, that revolution will have to wait because England are currently occupied with figuring out what went wrong for them. And, to be fair, it won’t be an extensive search. But Brendon McCullum is not ready to overlook the silver lining on the gloomy day England are stuck in while foraging for answers. And that glimmer of hope is none but Jofra Archer, who has been one of the very few relieving things for England this tournament. For the English head coach, Archer’s return to competitive cricket is bigger than any win for the team.
“He’s been out of competitive cricket for a couple of years,” McCullum said. “I think it’s taken just a little bit of time to get that rhythm of gameplay back but I think he’s been really good. He’s bowled high pace, he’s played a lot of cricket, he’s been able to get significant workload under his belt throughout this time and we’ve seen moments of how great Jofra is, even tonight, a couple of wickets he took the other night against Afghanistan, three with the new ball.”
“We know how great a player Jofra is at the very top of his game and to have him back and to have him fit and excited about playing is a real win for English cricket.”
England would not want to get ahead of them by already picturing Archer in whites, but regardless of how careful they wish to stay, there is no hiding from the fact that the ultimate aim for England and Jofra Archer is nothing more than to secure triumphs in the longest format.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re always doing the right thing by Jof [Jofra Archer] as well and understand the risks involved. But I’m pretty sure he’s pretty keen to play Test cricket and you look at someone like Jof – and if you can add him to the battery of fast bowlers you’re trying to build, that can only strengthen this squad. We’ll wait and see, but overall, I’m really pleased with where Jof’s at and it’s great to see him back playing and injury free at the moment.”
Until then, England have a tough introspection job to do and formulate an effective antidote to their problems. Without it, as McCullum understands too, England’s hopes for a better future will only be reduced to some sort of wishful thinking.
“We weren’t good enough across, obviously very disappointed,” McCullum said when asked how they plan to plot the future ahead. “We had high hopes of being able to finish the tournament with a bit of a bang, but we were very poor and we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ll put our thinking caps on over the next few weeks and start to try and navigate our way through what an improvement looks like across our white-ball cricket and make sure we try and be pretty thorough with that and work out a way that we can get ourselves back to where we should be.”
England are the only side to have finished their Champions Trophy campaign with a naught in their points column, and that, pretty effectively, sums up their woes across formats lately. With the next mega-event nearly 12 months away, they have enough time for seeing to the long-due rebuilding.
