Peter Moores: I want to carry on desperately – we just haven’t played well for a while

'We know we have to play better,' says embattled coach

Peter Moores (Getty Images)

There will be plenty of recriminations. That is the inevitability of sporting failure and England’s woeful exhibition in the World Cup has left the professional game in the country as fragile as it has ever been.

No excuses were offered after the 15-run defeat to Bangladesh which ensured England’s elimination. They have one match to play against Afghanistan, on Friday, but a handsome victory will mean nothing. Defeat really is unthinkable.

Peter Moores, the coach, will be the object of a chorus of disapproval, as will Paul Downton, who appointed him. Moores’ response to the humiliation was to say: “We thought 275 was chaseable. We’ll have to look at the data.”

Eoin Morgan leads his side off the pitch after their defeat to Bangladesh (Getty Images)

England have lost repeatedly since Moores took over last year. He was not surprised about calls for him to go.

“Yeah, it goes with the territory, but it’s a bigger picture than that for me,” he said. “We haven’t played good one-day cricket for a while and there’s areas we know we’ve got to get better. We haven’t got enough variations in certain areas. I don’t think the players that have played are bad players, we just haven’t played well enough.”

Whether Moores’ coaching methods are working must be open to doubt. England were swept aside by Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka and completely lost their nerve against Bangladesh.

“People are going to be very upset, as we’re very upset, because we’ve got a lot of passionate fans out there,” Moores admitted. “They’re desperate for us to do well and we know that and we feel it, and that makes you feel terrible because you want to do better.

“We’ve just exited a World Cup, so I’m not going to start looking at what conversations I’ll have with Paul. I want to carry on desperately.”

While both Moores and the captain, Eoin Morgan, were non-plussed, they could offer no explanation for England losing so badly or for being so patently short of the skill necessary in the modern game.

“We often see experienced players sort of dominating this World Cup, as people have played a little bit longer than some of our lads,” said Moores. “But we make no excuses. I think the messages are clear. I think the players know what they’re trying to do. We haven’t always done that, so we’ve paid the penalty.”

Morgan – who was thrust into the captaincy six weeks before the tournament in a desperate gamble by the selectors which seemed certain to fail and probably deserved to – was baffled by England’s fourth defeat in five matches. They have failed against all the nations ranked in the top 10.

“I’m extremely disappointed because, within the group, there was a lot of belief and expectation to go further than this,” he said. “It’s more surprise than anything else.

“I can’t complain about our preparation. It was good – we just couldn’t get our performance right. We couldn’t gel our batting and bowling. We’ve done it only a couple of times over the last 12 months. Since we’ve touched down here we’ve tried to address that problem and we felt we were making strides. We didn’t today.”

England’s dreadful performance is made worse by the fact that the calendar was cleared from the end of last season. All attention was focused on one-day cricket. England might as well have been playing backyard quoits.

Morgan seemed at a loss to explain why it has all gone so badly wrong. His own form has been terrible and he made his second duck in the competition in which his top score has been 46.

“The players are good enough,” he said. “I’ve been saying that throughout the tournament. We’ve had individual performances but they haven’t been consistently good enough to make them a team performance – they’ve been sporadic. We’ve tried to address that but it hasn’t come easy. I believe we have the right calibre of players.

“It’s confidence from winning games of cricket – and performing under pressure comes from confidence. If we came into this game with a string of wins and then all of a sudden had a huge collapse I’d say we need to address that, but it’s under-performing.” Under-performing in sport, as England have done for so many months, usually carries a cost.