Moeen Ali: “I feel I did not perform and I feel like I let the team down, the fans down”
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England all-rounder Moeen Ali has admitted that he felt he let his teammates down in the recent Ashes series as he failed to live up to expectations.
Moeen featured in all five Tests despite nursing a finger injury and scored 179 runs at an average of 19.88. He also took five wickets at an average of 115.
Given that England lost the series 4-0, Moeen admitted it was tough knowing that he hadn’t risen to the occasion when his team needed it the most.
“I feel I did not perform and I feel like I let the team down, the fans down,” Moeen was quoted as saying by The Mirror. “That was the most disappointing thing for me. It was my biggest fear.
“It’s not that you are not scoring runs or not getting wickets. It’s just that you feel as an individual you are letting your team-mates down.
“It has been a very tough tour and when your confidence is low, you are trying to perform the best you can but it’s not happening it is disappointing.
“When you lose a bit of confidence in your own game sometimes you try harder and it can be that the harder you try the worse it gets.
“That’s what was happening. You try everything – different approaches going into bat, be positive, but nothing really came off and like I said the harder I tried the worse it was getting.”
With the Ashes done and dusted, the 30-year-old conceded that he is pleased to be playing ODI cricket, especially as he regained some confidence with his performance in the first ODI, where he finished with figures of 1-39 off his 10 overs.
“It’s pretty difficult to get away from it and you start doubting yourself as a player,” he said. “The thing that you have to realise though is that bad performances don’t make you a bad player.
“It really comes from inside yourself. People can say whatever they want but it’s you that has to really believe in yourself and sometimes that’s difficult to do.
“It was nice to move to a different format of the game because the pressure is less, if that makes sense.”
England currently hold a 1-0 lead in the five-match ODI series against Australia and are also ranked third in the format.
“It just feels like we can genuinely beat anybody anywhere,” Moeen said. “The attitude is obviously different because it’s a different sort of cricket, it’s been refreshing. (Australia) were too good for us in the Ashes whereas in the one-day stuff we have players who can break records, as we saw. It’s fun. It’s a great environment to be around.”