Ahmedabad: Asked whether the defeat at the hands of New Zealand in the ODI World Cup opener underlines the importance of Ben Stokes, England Captain Jos Buttler said there are many top players other than him.
“No, not at all. I think Ben’s a top player but we’ve got many top players. I think everyone in the team got into double figures today and we didn’t have enough guys go on and make telling contributions. It’s not just Ben who is able to score runs in our team. We’ve got brilliant players right throughout the squad. So, we had a lot of starts,” he told reporters in the post-match press conference here late Thursday night.
The team lost because the players were just a bit off in their execution and weren’t clinical with shot making and gifted New Zealand a few wickets, Buttler said, adding, “And as I just mentioned, we were a long way short of our best and still made 280, which shows the level that we can play at.”
Asked what went wrong for his team, Buttler said they were probably looking at a score of 330 which would have allowed them to apply pressure.
“I think we were short of runs with the bat. I think the wicket probably did get better under the lights, but I think we were a long way short of our best with the bat and still made 280.
So, we’re probably looking at a score of 320, 330 which would have allowed us to build some kind of pressure and stuff. But I thought the margin for error was very small on that wicket and two batters who played exceptional innings,” he said.
