Dubai: England coach Trevor Bayliss has blamed lack of urgency by the team's batsmen as the main reason for the side's loss against Sri Lanka in the ongoing ICC Men's Cricket World Cup.
England was not able to chase down a mediocre total of 233 against Sri Lanka and the team fell short by 20 runs. Lasith Malinga starred for Sri Lanka as he scalped four wickets.
"We seemed to think that if we batted for a bit of time and put together a partnership, we would be alright, but we forgot about the process we go through to make those partnerships happen. If we had shown the urgency at the start of the innings that we had at the end, we would have been in a better place," International Cricket Council (ICC) quoted Bayliss as saying.
No England batsmen was able to stay at the crease for a long time and in the end the whole match depended upon all-rounder Ben Stokes. He played a knock of 82 runs, but he ran out of partners which resulted in Sri Lanka's win.
Bayliss remarked that the team took Sri Lanka lightly and he also said that the pitch was not the easiest to bat upon.
"Although the pitch wasn't the easiest to bat on, normally we are still knocking the ball around and finding gaps. I don't think we did that well enough. There has been a lot of noise around the England team playing well over the last little while, and I think we just took it a little bit easy with the bat," Bayliss said.
England was in a spot of bother at 170/5 during their run-chase and at that moment Moeen Ali played a horrible shot to get dismissed. Bayliss, however, did not blame the batsman and said the players need to try different things to succeed.
"Moeen is obviously disappointed, but other times, he hits it over the fence and we'd be yelling 'great shot'. Players have to try things, and you're always going to make a mistake if you are trying things. That was not a great time to play the shot, having hit the six the ball before," Bayliss said.
The England coach Bayliss also said that the team missed Jason Roy's presence in the team. Roy was ruled out from the team's matches against Sri Lanka and Afghanistan due to a hamstring tear.
"When someone of Jason's ilk isn't playing, then, of course, you're going to miss him," he said. "We are not going to risk him, that's for sure. We'll look at each game in turn and look for the medical people to see if they think he's alright. If not, we will do the same the next time," Bayliss said.
England will next take on Australia, India and New Zealand in their remaining matches and they need to win at least two matches to progress to the semi-final stage.
The team will next face Australia on June 25.
