England skipper Jos Buttler exuded confidence in his team's ability to bounce back from their crushing 9-wicket defeat against New Zealand in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 opener on Thursday, October 5, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Devon Conway and Rachin Ravindra’s record-breaking centuries helped the Black Caps chase down their target of 283 in just 36.2 overs.
After the defeat, Buttler admitted that the defeat was tough to take while adding that they were not even close to their best against New Zealand.
Jos Buttler told reporters after the embarrassing loss: “The first thing that springs to mind is whether you lose by a run or a defeat like that, it is one loss at the start of a very long tournament. That’s something that I’d be encouraging everyone to remember.
It's certainly a tough loss to take...but just as we, had we won the game, don't get too high, we don't get too low when we lose as well.”
Speaking about England’s batting, the 33-year-old noted: “We were probably looking at a score of 320-330 which would have allowed us to build some kind of pressure. But I thought the margin for error was very small on that wicket and two (New Zealand) batters played exceptional innings.”
Meanwhile, Buttler said it was not the first time England had suffered such a heavy defeat, and they have won many matches with such big margins, so they won’t go much in depth about the loss.
He signed off by saying, “We're not robots. Sometimes you don't play as well as you would like. Everyone's working hard everyone's prepared well and as I said we were just a bit off. There's plenty of stuff for us to work on and get better at the start of a long tournament.”
(With Reuters Inputs)
