Defeats to India could be good thing moving forward: Moeen Ali

By PTI

LONDON: All-rounder Moeen Ali feel the defeats to India in the T20s and first ODI will be a “good thing” for England in the long run as “sometimes you learn more from losing.”

Moeen added that there is no need to panic after England were handed a 10-wicket thrashing by India in the series-opening ODI on Tuesday.

The hosts had earlier lost the T20I series 1-2.

“We’ve lost a few games, which is good for us, I think, moving forward,” Moeen told reporters.

“Then hopefully closer to the (T20) World Cup (in Australia in October), we start winning. It doesn’t mean we do”t want to win now.”

“But you don’t want to win all the games in my opinion. It’s a good thing that sometimes you learn more from losing,” he added.

The 1-2 T20I series loss that preceded the ODI was new white-ball skipper Jos Buttler’s first assignment as Eoin Morgan’s replacement.

England also have a new coach at the helm in Australian Matthew Mott, who took over the duty in May.

“He’ll (Buttler) be fine, the team will be fine, there’s no need to panic or change anything.

We have so many senior players and we just need to step up as senior players in the team.

“We’ve been dominating for the last few years. We’ve had a lot of success. We won a World Cup. You don’t want to peak too early. We know there are players that need to come back in who can strengthen us.”

England, the reigning 50-over champions, were bundled out for 110 in in 25.2 overs with star players like Jason Roy, Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Liam Livingstone all out for ducks.

“It is difficult. We have played a lot more shots and sometimes it was a case of ‘do we keep going?’ But here we were 20 (26) for five and that has not happened a lot.”

“Normally when we haven’t played well, we have been 70 for five and you can counter. But the ball was newer, they were bowling well. We knew we had to counter but it was difficult.”

The second ODI is scheduled to be held at the Lord’s on Thursday.