CRICKET WORLD CUP
Group A preview - Group B preview - Results sheet
Group update - England review - Group review - Quarter finals - Semi finals - FINAL
Group update - England review - Group review - Quarter finals - Semi finals - FINAL
SHAMBOLIC England wrote a new chapter in their long and wretched history of Cricket World Cup lows after being knocked out in the group stage by Bangladesh in Adelaide today.
The Tigers won by 15 runs to qualify for the quarter finals for the first time ever as England failed to progress out of the groups for a third time in the last five editions.
Yes, in fairness to coach Peter Moores and the current squad, English failure at a World Cup is hardly exactly something new - and the 1999 exit at the start of that run actually came on home soil.
But that is not quite a valid comparison. So much has changed about English cricket in the last 16 years, and all of it has been with the intention of preventing a repeat failure.
The players are now centrally-contracted to the England Cricket Board - and they have been for some time - while the ECB itself is one of the wealthiest organisations in the sport worldwide.
Thus, as unacceptably cringeworthy as the 1999 debacle remains to look back upon, this latest early departure is just about unthinkable, given the resources now involved.
England even seemed to have produced a clear plan ahead. A whole Ashes tour was moved forward 12 months - and promptly lost 5-0 - to leave the whole of this winter focused on the 50-over format.
Meanwhile, Kevin Pietersen - the team's undoubted best player - was sacked after claims he was a disruptive influence to the dressing room.
Moores then returned for his second spell as national team coach to set about a rebuilding the side around the captaincy of Alastair Cook.
But it was at this point that it all started to go very wrong indeed. Cook struggled for form - and, while he recovered his position as Test skipper by the end of last summer, his One-Day record remained dreadfully poor.
Onto the seven-match autumn tour of Sri Lanka - and, with Cook still unable to make a major contribution, England lost 5-2 and the captain was axed.
Yes, just eight weeks before the start of the World Cup, Irish-born Eoin Morgan was being hastily installed - although, if that had perhaps been the extent of the muddled thinking, it would have been almost forgiveable.
Then, however, the England set-up trumped even its own acclaimed capability for self-destruction.
Then, however, the England set-up trumped even its own acclaimed capability for self-destruction.
Almost throughout the whole build-up, James Taylor had batted at three and Ravi Bopara at six, while Chris Woakes had taken the new ball.
Literally on the eve of the tournament, this all changed. Bopara was replaced by the out-of-practice Gary Ballance and Taylor was moved from three to six to accommodate him. Broad, meanwhile, took the new ball out of Woakes's hands.
Unsurprisingly it did not work - and a clearly unsettled side was roundly thrashed by 111 runs by Australia inside a boisterous and joyous Melbourne Cricket Ground.
An even bigger defeat came against the other hosts New Zealand in Wellington. There, England were bowled out for 123 and Brendon McCullum's inspired Black Caps knocked the runs required off inside 13 overs.
It was a spectacularly crushing reverse and left England facing a banana skin of a tie against the auld enemy, Associate nation Scotland.
England did at least win that one - but still found time to collapse unconvincingly from 172-0 after 30 overs to 303-8 - and it was if the 300 mark had become the team's be-all and end-all.
Certainly, that was the case against Sri Lanka when - having made 309-6 - skipper Morgan defended the total as a "par score" because that is what the data on the laptop read.
Sadly, England had not realised that this World Cup cannot much be anaylsed on a computer.
They have not realised the best players in the world - most notably McCullum, AB de Villiers and Kumar Sangakkara - are so intent in putting on such a show that the final score of an innings just cannot be predicted.
Sangakkara himself and Lahiru Thirimanne proved Morgan so horribly wrong as both made big centuries and the Sri Lankans beat England with the loss of just a single wicket.
It was a third massive loss out of four - and, with Bangladesh benefiting from a washout against the Aussies, left this tie as a must-win for England.
Why then did Morgan - having won the toss - opt for a nervy chase when a truly big score, ie. more than 300, would have likely batted the Bangladeshis out of the game?
Perhaps he did not trust or believe England would be able to make that truly big score. There cannot be many other explanations.
As it happened, the decision to insert Bangladesh did not look a bad one as James Anderson finally got the ball to swing, reducing the Tigers to 8-2.
At 99-4, England were still well on top - but then Mahmudullah made history, becoming the first Bangladesh player to score a World Cup century, as his side recovered to 275-7.
Even still, a chase of 276 - though nervy - was highly achievable in Adelaide where one of the boundaries is particularly short.
That certainly looked the case as England reached 97-1 - but Moeen Ali's daft run out belied the jitters which were properly exposed when Ian Bell, Morgan and Taylor all fell in quick succession.
Joe Root and Jos Buttler tried to rebuild the innings - but, once Root was caught behind with still more than 100 runs required, it was clearly Buttler or bust.
Bust was the outcome - though not before the Somerset-born man made an enterprising 65 from 52 balls.
His departure, however, truly was the beginning of the end with the unfortunate Chris Jordan adjudged to have been run out two balls later.
Jordan had actually made his ground with a desperate dive but his bat bounced up as the ball hit the wickets and even Lady Luck had vacated the room.
Not that England had played well enough to deserve much in the way of favours - even if, amazingly, Woakes and Broad had one last go at an almighty heist.
Broad, now on the record as fearful of the short ball, hit his first half-tracker for six - and, suddenly, the target was down to 16 off the final two overs.
England did not score again as Broad and then Anderson had no answer to the pace of Rubel Hossain.
Finally, it was over. England were out, deservedly out, having recorded one win against Scotland and four losses from their five games.
Oddly enough, it is a record matched exactly by Afghanistan against whom England face in what is an effective fifth-placed playoff on Friday in Sydney.
Has there ever been a more ignominious occasion in the history of English cricket?
ENGLAND AT CRICKET WORLD CUP 2015
Full results
| GROUP A TABLE | W | L | NR Tie | Run rate | Pts |
| (Q) NEW ZEALAND | 5 | 0 | 0 | +3.09 | 10 |
| (Q) AUSTRALIA | 3 | 1 | 1 | +1.60 | 7 |
| (Q) BANGLADESH | 3 | 1 | 1 | +0.21 | 7 |
| (Q) SRI LANKA | 3 | 2 | 0 | -0.15 | 6 |
| ENGLAND | 1 | 4 | 0 | -1.00 | 2 |
| AFGHANISTAN | 1 | 4 | 0 | -1.88 | 2 |
| SCOTLAND | 0 | 4 | 0 | -1.42 | 0 |
ENGLAND CRICKET WORLD CUP HISTORY
1975 Semi finals
1979 Runners-up
1983 Semi finals
1987 Runners-up
1992 Runners-up
1996 Quarter finals
1999 Group stage
2003 Group stage
2007 Super eights
2011 Quarter finals
2015 Group stage
Team-by-team group stage review to follow next week
Team-by-team group stage review to follow next week
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