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Mark Butcher criticizes Jos Buttler-led England men’s cricket team for their ‘arrogance,’ saying it makes everyone love seeing them lose. England exited the 2025 Champions Trophy early.
Jos Buttler (AP Photo)
Former England international Mark Butcher believes the Jos Buttler-led men’s side’s ‘arrogance’ makes ‘everybody’ love seeing them lose. He said people can’t stand this England team because they don’t give 50-over cricket enough time and still go to ICC competitions feeling they deserve to win.
England suffered an early exit from the 2025 Champions Trophy after losing their first two group-stage matches to Australia and Afghanistan. Between the 2023 World Cup and this tournament (where they exited in the group stage, too), they had played just 14 ODIs, winning only four.
Their most recent result in the leadup to the tournament was a 3-0 series defeat in India. In the middle of that series, England opener Ben Duckett said his team didn’t care about losing the bilateral because their focus was on the Champions Trophy.
“What I will say is this, I completely and utterly understand why everybody loves seeing England lose,” Butcher said on a Wisden podcast. “And the reason for this is this, and I’ve probably said this before long, long time back – the arrogance of English cricket to decide that after you strive for all that time to win a 50-over World Cup, and then within the next breath, you decide that it’s not important enough for your for your players to play.”
England lost to Afghanistan by eight runs at the Gadaffi Stadium in Lahore. The stadium had a lot of Afghan fans in attendance but even local neutrals were seen cheering for them over the English.
“The arrogance in that and the comeuppance that has come around… there’s no wonder … the crowd there all supporting Afghanistan, whether they’re from, whether they’re from Afghanistan or Pakistan, or wherever they are.”
Butcher had flagged a lack of ODI experience within this England team even before the Champions Trophy, saying that most of the players weren’t used to the tempo of 50-over cricket.
“The very thought that you, that you think that you can, you’re good enough, basically, to decide that one format isn’t worth your time, but yet you still feel as though you’re sort of up there and deserving of winning these major trophies. It is part of the reason why people can’t stand us … You go there in all of these competitions with very high hopes of winning and putting your best performance in and doing yourself and your country proud: what right do we have to think that you’re going to be good enough to win a 50-over competition?” Butcher added.
Butcher is not the first English pundit to say that about Buttler and Co. During the India series, Kevin Pietersen had similar comments about them during the India series while Alex Hartley also echoed the sentiments recently.