West Indies vs England 2019: 5 key takeaways from the ODI series

Issues with England’s Bowling

Mark Wood's performance has made him a leading prospect for England's pace attack in the World Cup

England have one of the most impressive batting line-ups in the world as far as the 50-over version of the game is concerned. It has been a key ingredient of their great success since the last World Cup.

The spin-bowling department has also done its job efficiently with Adil Rashid emerging as a very potent bowler in the shorter format.

But the one area where there remain some issues is pace bowling. This series brought this problem to the fore in a big way. The main problem is the absence of a bowler with an x-factor, somebody who has extreme pace or someone with a bagful of tricks.

Mark Wood was probably their best bowler in this series and he could provide the extra pace required. But who else could lead the way remains to be seen. Woakes has been a consistent performer but didn’t make as big an impact as was expected. Will he be able to hold back the best batsmen in the World Cup on flat pitches? We don’t know.

Liam Plunkett has height and has been a good performer for his team for an extended period of time. But he too was below par in this contest. Others like Tom Curran and David Willey are yet to convince the world of their talent.

There is now talk of getting Jofra Archer into the team. This is proof that the final make-up of the bowling line-up is not certain. England have very little time to remedy this issue.