Botham, Hussain slam 'embarrassing' England

The UK press have pulled no punches on England’s crushing eight-wicket loss to red-hot New Zealand in Wellington yesterday.

Eoin Morgan’s men were bundled out for 123 thanks to Tim Southee’s record-breaking haul of 7-33, before Black Caps captain Brendon McCullum blasted 77 from only 25 balls to help his side reach the target with 226 balls to spare.

Commentator Former champion allrounder Sir Ian Botham, writing for the Mirror, labelled England’s second-straight defeat in the tournament as “the worst performance in 40 years”.

“In nearly 40 years of playing for and watching England in one day cricket I have not seen a worse performance than the one I saw in Wellington on Friday,” Botham wrote.

“There have been other terrible performances of course, such as the Australia day defeat in 2007 which also finished before the lights came on, and the shellacking they took against the Aussies in 2003.

“But this was just embarrassing. It wasn’t even a contest.” 

Botham applauded New Zealand’s thrilling brand of cricket, but admits he “never imagined that they would do what they have done to an England team that are now in crisis.” 

The emphatic loss has former England ODI captain and Scotland assistant coach Paul Collingwood saying his adopted team has the belief they can beat Morgan’s men in Monday’s match in Christchurch, and fears England won’t reach the quarter-finals.

"England don't look as if they'll get out of the group at this stage," said Collingwood in the Mirror. "That's the harsh reality.

"You can make a change here and there but it's almost as if the damage has been done.

“England has got the most powerful batting line-up we've ever had if we pick players like Ravi Bopara in the middle-order and Alex Hales up the top.

"The one-day game is going that way and it's almost like we don't want to take risks.

“Two years ago England and New Zealand were probably on a par but now the gap is so much because they've taken an aggressive approach and built confidence and momentum.

"With my Scotland hat on, there's real confidence and belief we can get a win. It's genuine because the guys are getting closer and closer against international opposition.” 

Writing for the Mail Online, former England captain Nasser Hussain failed to recall a bigger mismatch.

“That was the most one-sided game I have ever seen,” he wrote.

“It was a complete annihilation. We thought England would be better once they stopped playing Australia but this was worse.

“The bottom line is that England still play old-fashioned limited-overs cricket.

“Their default position in difficult times is still to go back to Test players, like we have seen with Gary Ballance, rather than a more attacking option.

“If they keep going down that road they will keep getting bitten.

“They look a fearful side who were up against a team playing without fear.” 

The Guardian’s Mike Selvey says England’s performance would have been more familiar in Middle Earth than the ‘Cake Tin’ in Wellington. 

“England cricketing disasters can come with the bar set very high, but even by their lofty standards this was par excellence,” Selvey wrote.

“The defeat, at the hands of an urgent New Zealand superbly led by Brendon McCullum, went beyond the realms of simple humiliation (that happened a week ago in the Melbourne Cricket Ground) and entered that of fantasy, a dream, a nightmare.”