Cricket World Cup 2019: Pressure of being favourites isn't getting to England says Joe Root

Joe Root has dismissed talk that England are wilting under the pressure of being World Cup favourites.

The tournament hosts fell to a second successive defeat with the chastening 64-run loss against Australia on Tuesday coming just days after the surprise reverse against Sri Lanka on Friday.

The results leave the world’s number one side in real danger of missing out on the semi-finals altogether with crunch matches against India and New Zealand to come.

But Root doesn’t believe that the increased expectation is getting to the England dressing room.

“I wouldn’t say that’s been a massive thing," he said. "You turn up at certain venues and things have been quite different throughout this tournament to when we’ve played one-day series in the past and we’ve certainly not adapted as well as we should have in the last two games in terms of the surfaces.

“If you look at the par scores in this tournament they’ve been very different to when we’ve played in bi-lateral series.

“There are a number of things we could’ve done slightly better in the last two games. But it’d be silly to sit and mope about that and get caught up in it when we’ve got two opportunities to go on and qualify.

“If we embrace the challenge that’s in front of us and play anywhere near our potential we are more than capable of getting in the semis”.

Both the defeats at Lord’s and Headingley have seen England capitulate when chasing what most would see as eminently gettable targets.

While admitting that those performances have fallen well below what is expected behind the scenes, Root doesn’t believe there’s anything fundamentally wrong with their approach and says he and his teammates will head into the final two group stage matches confident they can do what is required to make the final four.`

“I think when we’ve done it well we’ve had two substantial partnerships throughout the chase and we’ve not really managed that and not had two guys who have batted for a long enough period of time and put the opposition under pressure for a 20-25 over period which generally when we’ve done it really well has served us really well," he added.

“There’s definitely things we can take from the last two games to help us try and get it right going into the last two and I strongly believe we are more than capable of qualifying for the semi-finals.

“It doesn’t really matter how you get there, it’s then that the tournament really starts to kick in. We see these next two games as quarter-finals which in a way when it comes round to the end of the group stage should serve us really well.

“You’re always going to have win big games at some stage in the tournament if you’re going to go on and win it. It might just be that ours have come sooner than we might have anticipated.

“It’s frustrating and very disappointing that we’ve played in the manner that we have in the last two games but we’ve played both of these teams in the recent past and had huge success. We’ve now got to look at all the stuff we’ve done well throughout the competition and put it all together.”