Bowling flexibility is key for England and Buttler after narrow Antigua defeat

It is easy to see the defeat against West Indies on Sunday as a continuation of England’s World Cup travails, but with a little effort it is possible to paint it as a complete contrast: while in India the team’s results were critical and the games themselves not that interesting, in Antigua the one-day match was sensational and the result not that important.

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“It was a great game,” Rehan Ahmed said. “I’d much rather those games than an easy win or an easy loss. We didn’t execute how we wanted to, it happens, it’s cricket. There were a lot of positives from it. We thought we won most of the game: we put a good score on the board, we bowled very well for the majority of the game, we just lost the key moments, which is fine as well.

“I don’t think you can base everything on results. There’s always going to be a winner and a loser and sometimes you come out on the losing side. It’s more the learnings you take from it and the positives you take from it, and there were a lot of positives with bat and ball for everyone.”

England’s performance on Sunday never approached being perfect, but for a long time it looked like being more than good enough. Posting the best score in the 16-year history of the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium and successfully defending it, however narrowly, would have been an impressive start to the tour, a fine base from which to build.

From the first over of the day, when Phil Salt scored two boundaries, to the 91st, when West Indies needed an improbable late surge, England appeared the likely victors. And this away from home, against a team that apart from being more familiar with the conditions had spent two weeks in a training camp preparing for the series.

Then it all unravelled. After Rehan bowled his final delivery of the day West Indies needed 101 from 54 balls. Shai Hope had spent 22 overs at the crease and had scored 57 off 58, Romario Shepherd was on six having faced eight balls, and there had been no hint of what was to come. But after being becalmed by spin, the hosts tucked into England’s seamers.

Gus Atkinson bowled three more overs, conceding a more than creditable 20 runs and eventually dismissing Shepherd, but Brydon Carse and Sam Curran exerted no such control. Both had made impressive contributions with the bat towards the end of England’s innings, scoring 69 off 37 balls between them, but then they gave away 87 off 35 towards the end of West Indies’ innings.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has launched a newly independent regulatory body, responding to recommendations made by this year's damning Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report. The report outlined widespread discrimination in the sport when it published wide-ranging findings earlier this year and made 44 suggestions for corrective action.

The ECB had pledged to have an independent body up and running before the start of the 2024 season and has moved fast to make good on that. Monday's announcement of the 'Cricket Regulator' - with responsibility for matters of compliance, safeguarding, anti-corruption, anti-doping and anti-discrimination - is the governing body's latest response.

The regulator will be headed by former police officer Dave Lewis, taking the role of interim director, and he will set up the framework before a successor is appointed next year in open recruitment. Lewis retired in 2020 as deputy chief constable of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Police following a 30-year career. The Cricket Regulator will be overseen by another new body, the independent cricket regulatory board.

The ECB chief executive, Richard Gould, welcomed the changes, stating: 'It is important that the game has the best processes in place in order to enforce regulations. The ICEC report recommended that we introduce further independence to the game's regulatory process and the Cricket Regulator, ring-fenced from the ECB, will do that.' PA Media

England would have benefited from having a bit of flexibility with their bowling in these final stages, but left themselves with no choice but to bowl out Carse and Curran. Perhaps if Will Jacks had been given a few overs, an attractive option given the success of those spinners who did see some action, the game might have ended differently.

“Jos is an unbelievable captain. It wasn’t like there were bad decisions throughout the game,” Rehan said. “We just didn’t execute at the end. I don’t think you can put anything down to Jacksy not bowling.”

But if going one down was not a significant setback, losing the second game on Wednesday – and with it the series – would inevitably increase the pressure on Matthew Mott, the England white-ball coach. To avoid that outcome England will need Buttler to nail his decision-making, and could do with him improving his miserable form with the bat.

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“Every time I bowl to him in the nets he smacks me everywhere,” Rehan said. “I can’t really speak to his confidence, I don’t think that’s my place, but I know that he’s probably the best white-ball player I’ve bowled to.”

At 19 Rehan is by a margin the youngest member of England’s squad: he missed the qualifying cut-off for January’s Under-19 World Cup by only three weeks. But there will still be an Ahmed in England’s squad for that tournament, with Rehan’s 15-year-old brother Farhan, an off-spinner, due to be included when it is announced on Tuesday. “He’s very excited,” Rehan said. “He’s actually at school right now doing his physics test. It’s an unbelievable achievement. I can’t wait to see him go out and do what he does.”