Moeen Ali plays down panic after Oval rout, but England's ODI rust is plain to see

"Sometimes you learn more from losing games," Moeen Ali said. After a ten-wicket defeat with 188 balls to spare in the first ODI against India, that's a lot of homework for England to get started on.

Tuesday's evisceration at The Kia Oval was as chastening a defeat as this team has had over the last seven years. The lead actors from the 2019 World Cup win were all on deck, all but skipper Jos Buttler coming and going in an opening capitulation of 26 for five inside eight overs. With that came a reminder that the machine does not move itself.

It's worth saying England could have still ended up in that heap were Eoin Morgan still at the helm. The presence of a new leadership pair in situ, with Buttler flanked by new white-ball coach Matthew Mott, will always get fingers twitching over laptop keys when such a shellacking comes around so early in their collective tenure. But the changes to date have largely been minimal, bordering on aesthetic.

Moeen, who was touted as a potential replacement for Morgan, likened Mott to Trevor Bayliss, who oversaw the seismic shift back in 2015. "He [Mott] is very relaxed and he's good. It doesn't look like it has affected him in any way." Beyond the scribbles in his notepad, Mott looked as Bayliss often did during the odd collapse under his tenure: unflustered, literally and figuratively unmoved.

It's also worth noting this was England's first defeat in nine. The problem, however, is carried in those eight victories.

The run began with two easy wins over Sri Lanka at the start of last summer, then three against Pakistan before three more against the Netherlands just last month. Those last two series wins were pulled off with what were ultimately "select" XIs: the former through a Covid outbreak, the latter due to a packed schedule.

"It will take a few defeats, which is fine," Moeen said, of getting England back up to the usual standards, amid the reintroduction of the heavy-hitters who have largely been preoccupied with Test and T20 commitments.

"In the past we have won a lot of games, got to a World Cup and lost those crucial games. We have lost a few games at the moment but that is good for us going forward, and closer to a World Cup we will start winning. We want to win now but you don't want to win all games. Sometimes you learn more from losing games."

Of course, that penultimate statement is a flat-out lie, albeit the kind that makes defeat a little easier to swallow. And yet there is a sound logic that coasting would be counter-productive for an England side who need to remember, along with some fundamentals, what made them such a force in this format.

Making heads or tails of English 50-over cricket is one of the more futile endeavours at the moment. The national team have only played 22 ODIs since the end of the 2019 World Cup and even the domestic iteration has broadly been rendered meaningless, which might explain why there is an underlying apathy-based confusion over where this team are at. Therefore, any conclusions drawn from this Jasprit Bumrah-inspired shellacking are loose and will probably be rendered meaningless after Thursday.

But there was a quiet sense at The Oval that the muscle memory of England's four-year body of work from 2015 might not be as reliable as first hoped. Given how many different ways England's ideal starting XI are pulled across formats, perhaps that's no surprise. However, it was interesting that Moeen was thinking out loud when asked to give his assessment on how Tuesday felt like an anomaly. A hallmark of the 50-over World Champions was a knack of making passable scores even after false starts. They only managed 110 this time around.

"It is difficult," he reflected. "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."

Moeen went on to explain adjustment to different formats isn't specifically the issue, rather the relentless flow of matches. " Even if they were all T20s it would have been difficult and the travelling in between. It would be difficult for most teams."

It does put the onus strongly on the next month to re-attune to the longer white-ball code. There are five games over the next 11 days, then nothing until three ODIs in March 2023 against Bangladesh. Naturally, T20 steals the focus ahead of the World Cup in Australia this October.

The insistence from Moeen that things will be "fine" by the time England defend their title in 15 months time was characteristically chill of the man. And though it is too early to panic, it's not too early to worry.