Heather Knight Column: England not at their best but defeat is no disgrace

It was a really entertaining game and Pakistan played outstandingly well. I think they were coming off the back of 11 losses in ODIs, so the way they played was brilliant, writes Heather Knight.

England’s performance in the field wasn’t quite at the same level as it was against South Africa. There were a couple of dropped catches, a few mis-fields, but for them to not bring their best game and still lose by 14 runs isn’t the worst thing in the world.

I listened to Eoin Morgan’s interview after the game and he said it’s very unlikely any team is going to go unbeaten in the competition although obviously it wasn’t ideal to lose.

But we lost our first game in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2017 and still finished top after the group stage.

The good thing about the format of the tournament is the best four teams will go through.

All the teams will play each other once, there’s nine games each before those semi-finals, so I don’t think England will be too worried. They’ll learn from things that didn’t quite go so well.

I think the way they fielded in the first match was probably one of their best fielding performances they’ve had, but I guess that’s just cricket - one game you’re on top of the world performing at your best, the next game you don’t have your best performance.

Sometimes you have one of those days in the field where things get a little bit contagious and little things go wrong, but I’m sure England will put it down as ‘one of those days’.

There were a lot of positives as well. It felt like Joe Root and Jos Buttler were going to chase down the target when they were both in, but we lost those wickets and had to re-build.

When you’re chasing that kind of score, you almost can’t have too many things that go wrong. Things have to go perfectly for it to happen and Pakistan took wickets at key times.

They got Root and Buttler just after those two had got their centuries, and bowled well towards the end, but I think England will move on quite quickly and put the result behind them.

That’s the thing about tournament cricket, you’ve always got the next game to focus on and turn your attention to, so I’m sure they will set their sights on Cardiff and Bangladesh now.

I watched the Bangladesh game live at the Oval and it was an awesome game, the support for Bangladesh was amazing and I’m sure it will be quite similar in Cardiff.

In fact, I’m not sure it will feel like a home game for England and this result proves that every game is going to be tough, which might actually take a bit of pressure off of them.

A few people have suggested that England will win it easily, so in a weird way it might actually take the pressure off and make everyone realise that anyone can beat anyone. It’s going to be a very competitive World Cup.

These last two games – England vs Pakistan and South Africa vs Bangladesh - have been brilliant, really competitive, great atmospheres and that’s what you want, isn’t it?

Competitive cricket for people to enjoy and the multi-cultural nature of the country means there will be support for all teams, which is absolutely brilliant.

Heather Knight captained England to success in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup on home soil in 2017 and was named one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year.

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