England suffered a first setback in their pursuit of World Cup glory after a 14-run defeat to Pakistan at Trent Bridge but Joe Root has stressed the importance of remaining calm.
Sparkling centuries from Root and Jos Buttler were scant consolation for the tournament hosts and favourites as Pakistan turned the form book on its head, snapping a run of 11 consecutive one-day international losses.
However, defeat in the round-robin stage is not a disaster by any means and Root believes England will regroup ahead of Saturday’s trip to Cardiff to tackle Bangladesh.
“We know what works for us as a formula, and as a team, but other sides are allowed to play well and we’ve got to make sure we learn quickly and bounce back at Cardiff.
“The temptation is to get a little bit tense, but one of our great strengths as a side is sticking to the way we go about things and be as smart as possible.
“One thing this side doesn’t do very often is to make the same mistake twice and I’m sure the guys will make sure it’s a very different performance against Bangladesh.”
Pakistan posted 348 for eight which, if overhauled, would have set a new tournament record for the highest successful chase.
Mohammad Hafeez was dropped on 14 by Jason Roy before going on to amass 84 while there were mis-fields and overthrows from a side that delivered a masterclass in fielding when they defeated South Africa in the curtain-raiser last week.
England captain Eoin Morgan said: “I don’t think it was that bad a day.
“It was just a really bad day in the field. It hasn’t happened a lot with us but there were mistakes that we don’t normally make. And that’s disappointing.
“Our performances with bat and ball throughout the tournament will ebb and flow. Today it wasn’t that bad.”
In an occasionally fractious encounter, the umpires pointedly warned Morgan about his side throwing the ball in on the bounce and later issued the same reminder to Pakistan skipper Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Buttler, meanwhile, seemed to take a look at the ball on his walk back to the pavilion after his 76-ball innings came to an end.
We will look to bounce back against Bangladesh in Cardiff.
Scorecard: https://t.co/AYQyqCveSm#WeAreEngland#CWC19#ExpressYourself pic.twitter.com/yDo7S8xLtE
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 3, 2019
Morgan added: “There were discussions throughout the whole of the two innings. The umpires came to me mid-innings and seemed to think that we were throwing the ball in on the bounce too much or it was being over-exaggerated.
“They emphasised it would be the same for both. The conversations that were stopping the game were that Pakistan were doing the same thing.
“Jos was just intrigued to see the ball. When the ball is hit against the LED boards it does scuff it up quite a lot so we he was just interested to see if the ball was more scuffed up.”
