No easy answers for England after World Cup fiasco

MUMBAI, Nov 05 (AFP): England's miserable early exit from the World Cup has left the reigning champions facing several questions but with few simple answers.
A departure before the knockout stages was finally confirmed by Saturday's 33-run loss to arch-rivals Australia in Ahmedabad -- with England's sixth defeat in seven games at the tournament leaving them rock bottom of the 10-team table.
Even non-Test playing Netherlands, the lowest-ranked side, have managed two wins.
It was their batting that let England down again as they failed to chase a target of 287 that would once have been well within the grasp of a powerful top order.
England have managed just one individual century in this World Cup thus far, through Dawid Malan, with star batsmen Jonny Bairstow, out for a duck on Saturday, and Joe Root failing to fire.
Broader issues have also been involved in a dramatic fall from their 2019 World Cup triumph.
Early defeats by New Zealand and Afghanistan led England to abandon their policy of picking a side full of all-rounders, only for team management to then reverse course again as they struggled to find a winning formula.
A similar lack of clarity was also evident in the approach of England's batsmen, caught between the policy of all-out aggression, that had served the team so well under now retired World Cup-winning skipper Eoin Morgan, or instead laying a foundation and then accelerating.
Much of the focus now will be on England white-ball captain Jos Buttler and limited-overs coach Matthew Mott.
But ditching Buttler as skipper and replacing experienced Australian coach Mott won't be straightforward given England have a Twenty20 World Cup title to defend in the United States and the West Indies in June.
That event may also delay a rebuild of England's white-ball team, with only four members of their original 15-man World Cup squad under the age of 30.
Another complicating factor is that during this tournament, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced a new raft of central contracts that included all their largely under-performing World Cup squad, with the curious exception of hard-grafting pacman David Willey -- who announced his international retirement days later.
The ECB also introduced multi-year deals for the first time. Injury prone fast bowler Mark Wood, 33, whose six tournament wickets have cost an expensive 58 runs apiece, has been given a three-year contract.