Cricket: Mixed emotions for England as winter ends in crushing defeat

Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss will hold a management debrief in due course, in which they can reflect on what went so right in the Ashes and what went not nearly so well on the subcontinent.

When that discussion takes place, after a springtime cooling period, the coach and captain will characteristically shirk no issues. Flower will doubtless revisit the themes he has already expressed in the aftermath of England's ten-wicket quarter-final trouncing by Sri Lanka - a lack of consistency and a fearful rather than fearless mental approach.

Strauss may again cite England's impossible winter schedule - mitigation he has been reluctant to voice publicly for fear of sounding like a beaten captain making excuses. And his future as one-day international captain may well also be at issue.

Flower said: "We came here to win a World Cup and we are now not going to do that. To lose out in the quarter-finals, even though we've been beaten soundly, is very disappointing - and we didn't want to go home right now. We've been pretty inconsistent in our limited-overs performances in recent months."

He added: "We've played some decent stuff, but in the main we've not done enough to get to the final week of the tournament. To be honest, we didn't deserve to get there because we haven't played well enough."

England were lauded just under a year ago for their planning and execution of the required skills as they at last won a maiden International Cricket Council trophy, at the World Twenty20 in the Caribbean.

But they never looked likely to follow up that achievement here. "They're different forms of the game, obviously, and the 50-over game is more like a game of chess than the Twenty20," said Flower, coming to terms with England's humbling in Colombo. "This match was a very good example of playing with fear. We were very tentative; we had a very poor start, and now we have paid the price for that tentativeness."

Flower will wait before he reflects further on England's World Cup failure. "I don't want to talk too much about those reasons right now," he said."I think it's best that we travel home, clear our heads and then we can look back on the last few months and review it properly - and probably with a cleaner set of eyes and a clearer mind."

Strauss welcomes the future rescheduling which means that never again will England, or fellow quarter-final losers Australia, be asked to play an Ashes and a World Cup in the same winter.

But he will not dress that up as the reason for another early departure by England from a competition they have still yet to win after ten attempts.

"It's a huge amount to ask players to tour Australia for three months, the highest-intensity cricket for an English team, and then go straight into a World Cup without spending any time at home," he said.

"The scheduling is not good and doesn't give you the best chance. But that's not an excuse for not doing well here.

"Clearly lessons have been learnt, and that cycle is changing. It would have been good if it had changed before this one."