Pakistan’s bowlers, backed up their captains – Sarfraz Ahmed’s – decision to bowl first by troubling the hosts from the onset with an impeccable line and a sharp fielding effort.
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“We left ourselves short today, adapting to conditions”, said Morgan.
“Great cricket in this tournament, and we weren’t anywhere close to it today”.
They were completing a remarkable turnaround after losing so heavily 10 days ago to India, who will bid to join them in the final when they take on Bangladesh in Birmingham on Thursday.
Big-hitting Stokes was in a restrained mood, failing to hit a single boundary and scoring 11 singles at the start.
“Sarfaraz needs to be told that he hasn’t done anything special at all as Pakistan was forced to win the games by someone”, he added.
“I’m just very disappointed”, Root said.
“I thought we bowled okay but certainly defending 200 we have to produce a well above-par bowling performance”.
Following the loss, Morgan blamed the pitch and said there was no home advantage for England. If that wasn’t enough, Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka in their third league match to advance into semis.
It was a major disappointment for England, who won all three group matches in their bid to claim a first global 50-over title and had beaten Pakistan in 12 of their last 14 one-day internationals.
“At this stage, if you can play the shots, you should play them”, said Fakhar, who has a strike rate in excess of 117.
Root has also backed England’s aggressive approach to limited overs cricket despite the team’s failure to adjust to conditions in Cardiff. That is out of England’s hands, but you have to adapt, it’s as simple as that.
“We continue to learn, everything we did was calculated, but Pakistan had played on the wicket previously and that helped”.
While India-Pakistan is one of the world’s biggest sporting rivalries, Bangladesh are fast emerging as a worthy competitor.
“There were huge expectations they d go on to win the tournament, I think justifiably so on the back of what they ve done over the last year-and-a-half”, said Atherton. Everything we did play was quite calculated.
“England must have known that pitches in ICC tournaments can start to show wear and tear”, he wrote. Bowling had lost his sharpness as Pakistan lost only three wickets in the chase. The boys at Surrey keep in contact with him, though we don’t want to put extra pressure on him when playing for England.
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“Two hundred and fifty or 260 would have been a good score and then it would have been a different run chase”, the Australian added.
