World Cup 2019: "People were waiting for us to fail," says Jonny Bairstow

What's the story?

England opener Jonny Bairstow has slammed England's critics. He feels that they have been harsh on the England side as they did exceedingly well in the first half of the World Cup. But when England lost two consecutive games, they jumped on to the team to criticize.

In case you didn't know...

Before the tournament, England were clear favourites to lift the World Cup. They were on their way to the semi-finals after winning important games during the initial part of the tournament. But, Eoin Morgan's team suffered two consecutive losses to Sri Lanka and then Australia, which has further complicated their road to the playoffs.

After the loss to arch-rivals Australia, former England captain Michael Vaughan criticized the England team in a radio interview. Vaughan said:

"This is looking like turmoil for England. I’ve been involved in a couple of atrocious World Cups. If they’re not careful, this could turn out to be top of the tree.”

The heart of the matter

When asked about Vaughan's interview and Kevin Pietersen tweet, here is how Jonny Bairstow responded:

“I’ve not even seen it, to be quite honest. I was on the radio this morning; I was surprised with a clip of Vaughan’s comments at 8.30am"

Bairstow further went on say that people are waiting for England to fail. He also stated that the current English team has done exceedingly well in the tournament.

"People now are paid to have an opinion, so they’ve got to have an opinion. Because we’ve done so well, any opportunity for someone to see we’ve lost two games, they were always going to jump on it. People were waiting for us to fail. They are not willing us on to win, in many ways they are waiting for you to get that loss, so they can jump on your throat. It’s a typical English thing to do, in every sport.”

What's next?

England are set to take on an unbeaten Indian team at Edgbaston, Birmingham on Sunday. The hosts need to beat India to stay alive in the tournament. If they lose against India then they must beat New Zeland and wait for other results to go their way in order to qualify for the semi-finals.