England and Afghanistan suffered defeats in their respective opening matches of the Champions Trophy 2025, and now face a risk of an early exit from the tournament. Both teams will go head-to-head in Lahore on Wednesday in what can be called a virtual quarter-final for them.
England vs Afghanistan, Champions Trophy 2025
But the bigger problem is for England. The team has been on a losing streak, and skipper Jos Buttler has looked clueless. Apart from losing their match vs Australia, they had lost their ODI series 3-0 vs India. Skipper’s leadership skills are under the scanner too. If that is not enough, they had an underwhelming 2023 World Cup campaign too.
Jos Buttler minced no words and said, “Yeah absolutely I think anytime as an England captain you want to perform and you want to perform well and you want you to lead your team to winning games of cricket. We haven’t been doing that enough in the recent past.”
Mediocre England Under Jos Buttler
“But soon as you sort of catch yourself thinking about any negative things or those kind of things trying to completely flip that and focus on all the positive things that could go right and where you can take the team. So, yeah, very much focused on that,” said Buttler.
But the washed out match between Australia and South Africa, has simplified the equation for all teams in the group. “I think the equation would be the same no matter what, we need to win two games of cricket, first of all we focus fully on tomorrow, its going to be a tough test against Afghanistan, but we’re really excited for that challenge. Everyone’s very much looking forward to the game, try to build on the positives of the last performance and try to take home the victory,” said Buttler.
