England may be the home of cricket, but when it comes to the limited overs versions of the game, the English international trophy cabinet is remarkably bare.
Victory in the 2009 World Twenty20 tournament remains their sole success, and despite reaching three of the first five World Cup finals, England have never won the world’s most sought-after cricket trophy.
In fact, after their defeat to Pakistan in the 1992 final, England’s World Cup performances have been in a steady decline. Two quarter-final appearances, in 1996 and 2011, represent the sum total of English achievement in the last six tournaments, and their abject effort in the last World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand in 2015, was widely derided.
But if 2015 represents a low point in England’s fifty-over fortunes, their path to the 2019 edition has been firmly on an upward trajectory. The failure in Australia was the catalyst for a bold new approach to the fifty over game, which took the success of New Zealand under Brendon McCullum’s captaincy as its model. The old-fashioned methods that had often seen England’s innings’ becalmed before a frantic late scamper for runs was jettisoned in favour of a bolder, more aggressive game plan.
Ironically, the first test of their new approach would come that summer, against a touring New Zealand side that had reached the World Cup final a few weeks earlier, and England delivered a statement of intent that resounded around the world, scoring 408 in a crushing 210-run victory; the first time that an England ODI team had ever passed 400. In winning a hugely entertaining series 3-2, England twice passed 350 and laid the foundations for four years of limited overs excellence.
Three years on from that fresh start, England had climbed up the ICC Limited Overs rankings to become one of the top two fifty-over teams in international cricket, and in the third ODI against Australia in June, they broke the world record for an ODI innings score, recording a monumental 481, fuelled by centuries from Jonny Bairstow and Alex Hales. They have maintained that position at the top of the pile and it is no surprise to see them generally rated as 9/4 favourites to win the World Cup for the first time, when it is staged in England and Wales this summer.
England have hosted the tournament before, of course, and it didn’t help them to succeed, but for the first time in decades, it feels as though English ODI cricket is at the cutting edge rather than bringing up the rear. With a batting line-up that features the explosive talents of Bairstow and Hales, along with Jos Buttler, Jason Roy, Joe Root and Moeen Ali, as well as a host of talented all-rounders, England back themselves to chase down pretty much any total, no matter the conditions.
For English cricket fans, there will be plenty of opportunities to support their team this summer, and cricket punters will be similarly keen to back England, after checking out the best bookmakers for big bets on the Bigbetbookmakers.com site. There will be strong opponents, of course, in the form of a powerful Indian team, not to mention the tough South Africans and the talented squads of Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan, but this year, for the first time since the 1980s, England go into a World Cup as favourites, and have a genuine chance to end their World Cup wait.
