Muddled methods call for the reset button to be hit

And so ends as battering and bruising a two months as any that English cricket has experienced.

- HARRY LATHAM-COYLE

Many similarly scarring winters of discontent have come before but since the start of 2025, the senior men’s and women’s sides have played 18 times and won just once. Credit, therefore, must go to Abi Norgrove’s U19s restoring a semblance of respectability with a semi-final finish at the World Cup in Malaysia.

Tournaments of torment are far from new but there was a singular sadness to the final outing of Jos Buttler’s tenure as white-ball captain on Saturday. The damage already done, both on the day and beforehand, the captain poked and prodded at the debris of his sinking ship on his way to a boundary-less 21, part of a final English omnishambles to conclude their Champions Trophy.

It was meant to be the tournament that got the England skipper smiling again; a grimace was about as close as Buttler came to a grin. Bowed and beaten by a post that has proved thankless for too much of his tenure, a relinquishing of duties after this tournament had come to feel likely in the India series that preceded it – England ill-prepared, ill-equipped and illdisciplined, careering into precisely the sort of miserable tournament that followed.

“It’s the right decision for me and it’s the right decision for the team,” Buttler conceded on Friday with doleful eyes. “It was quite clear this tournament was going to be important resultswise for my captaincy and going out with a bit of a hangover from the tournaments before, I’ve just reached the end of the road.

“My overriding emotions are sadness and disappointment but I’m sure in time that will pass and I’ll get back to really enjoying my cricket.”