CWC 2019: Chris Woakes hopes for better fielding from England in coming matches

Hosts and no.1 ranked ODI team England were beaten by Pakistan in their last match.

Chris Woakes | Getty

England all-rounder Chris Woakes was adamant after surprise defeat against
Pakistan on Monday, and said it was “no car crash” but accepted they have to raise fielding standards after a dismal show in fielding against Pakistan.

Just before the World Cup went underway, England white-washed Pakistan by 4-0 in a five-match ODI series. But what we saw in Nottingham on Monday were totally some different scenes as Pakistan put a challenging total of 348 on the scoreboard, and despite Joe Root and Jos Buttler centuries, they fell short of 14 runs.

Chris Woakes, Jofra Archer and Adil Rashid proved out to be expensive that day, and this was coupled up with poor fielding efforts that saw numerous runs being given away freely.

Jason Roy’s extraordinary drop proved out to be fatal, which revived Hafeez on a score of 14, who then went on scoring 84 runs.

Chris Woakes, on another hand, had sticky hands and took four catches, was at a loss to explain the decline in England performance just a few days’ after launching their campaign to win their first World Cup title with a stunning 104-run win over South Africa at the Oval.

He accepted that they need to raise their fielding standards when they face Bangladesh on Saturday in Cardiff. “By no means was it a car crash but it was the difference in the game. We didn’t field as well as we can and probably left 20 runs out there. It was just one of those days where we fumbled a few, probably dived over a couple,” said Woakes.

 “We’re obviously a very good fielding team, we’ve proved that over the past few years, and this was just an off day. We proved our standards at the Oval. We’ll meet up in Cardiff, go through our routines and try to meet those same standards.” Woakes said the round-robin nature of the 10-team World Cup would be tough to win without losing a group match.

“It’s unlikely any team will go through the tournament unbeaten and if they do it’s a hell of an effort. You’re going to have ups and downs form-wise. Sometimes it’s about how you bounce back,” he said.

Jason Roy was fined 15 percent of his match fee for uttering an audible indecency after a fielding error. Archer incurred the same penalty after his reaction, which was deemed dissent at an umpire’s decision to call his bouncer a wide.

Woakes escaped censure from the match referee for raising his finger to his lips and pointing to some Pakistan supporters after a fine catch on the boundary. “I was copping a bit of abuse, as you do from the opposition, but it was quite friendly, A little ‘shhh’ is just a bit of banter. I always do it with a smile on my face” he said.

(With inputs from AFP)

 
 

By Kartik Vyas - 05 Jun, 2019

    Share Via