England at risk of 2027 World Cup embarrassment and in need of ODI upswing

Harry Brook has admitted that he is flummoxed by England’s inability to get consistent results in recent one-day internationals, saying that some of the supposedly stellar talents in his squad – which includes up to seven batters he insists “would get into any team in the world” – “just haven’t performed well enough”.

“It is disappointing, isn’t it?” England’s white-ball captain admitted, as he looked ahead to the third and final fixture in an already-lost series against New Zealand. “You go round every single player there and you think: ‘Bloody hell, there isn’t many teams that they don’t get into in the world.’ It’s disappointing we haven’t performed as well as we could. Sometimes you’ve got to hold your hand up and say they’ve been the better team.”

The problem is that England keep coming across better teams, and in the last two years they have lost bilateral ODI series to West Indies, Australia, West Indies again, India, South Africa and now New Zealand, while winning only on the one occasion they got to play West Indies at home.

“We’ve got five, six, maybe seven batters who would get into almost every team in the world,” Brook said. “They just haven’t performed well enough. It’s disappointing. It’s disappointing for the fans, who want to watch us because they know that we play such an exciting brand of cricket. It was only a couple of games ago against South Africa when we got 400, so we’re not a million miles away. It’s just about a couple of scores here and there and then we nail it down, and hopefully we do find that template we can keep going forward with.”

England’s batters have underperformed so badly in this series that Jamie Overton, the No 8, outscored all of them but Brook in the first game and all of them including Brook in the second, without himself reaching 50. The team’s struggles in the format are such that they have dipped to eighth in the world rankings, with West Indies and Bangladesh close behind.

If they are still likely to qualify for the 2027 World Cup continued poor results could insert an embarrassing kink into the process. Places will be given to the top eight teams in the rankings on 31 March 2027, excluding co-hosts South Africa, currently sixth, and Zimbabwe, who are 11th. The next two teams on the list will be forced to battle through a 10-team qualifying tournament to claim a spot.

England’s fixtures over the next 13 months are unlikely to offer many easy ranking points. Before February 2027 they will play three-game series against India and Sri Lanka at home, and away in Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa and Pakistan – the latter as part of a tri-series also featuring Sri Lanka (again).

Including Saturday’s final fixture against New Zealand they have 20 ODIs scheduled before the qualifying deadline, of which 14 are away and all are against sides currently ranked in the top six. Meanwhile both Bangladesh and West Indies, ninth and 10th in the rankings, play the majority of their games at home, with the former having multiple opportunities to boost their points total in series against theoretically lesser opponents, with five games against Zimbabwe and six against Ireland.

Though Saturday’s game in Wellington is a dead rubber, with New Zealand 2-0 up in the series after a pair of one-sided victories, beating the side currently sitting second in the rankings would provide handy points, which under the ICC’s formula would be boosted because of the Black Caps’ high rating.

Though the match will be played at Sky Stadium, curiously England’s only training session in the capital will be held across town at Basin Reserve. Also curious was their route from Hamilton, where the second game in the series was played on Wednesday, to Wellington: though there were six direct flights between the cities on Thursday, the most obvious route and the one the home side took, England instead drove for two hours in the wrong direction before taking a longer flight from Auckland. The trip took them about five and a half hours, while their opponents were checking in to their new hotel after only three.