A dire run of ODI form has raised the embarrassing prospect of England having to go through qualifying to reach the showpiece event, held in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Prior to Saturday’s series-levelling win over Sri Lanka, England had lost 15 of their previous 20 ODIs and had lost 11 in a row away from home since a win in the West Indies in November 2024.

N/A

“It’s not actually a very nice feeling that, to be thinking we need to win X amount of games just to qualify for the World Cup,” former white-ball skipper Buttler told his For The Love of Cricket podcast.

“I’m sure there are permutations and someone could tell us, but I don’t know what they are.

“I feel a bit guilty for this, obviously, having been captain for a while when we didn’t get the results we wanted to end up in the rankings where we are.

“We just need to concentrate on winning games of cricket, winning series, get ourselves up those rankings which is where we want to take the team to and make sure we qualify automatically for that World Cup.”

Co-hosts South Africa and Zimbabwe will qualify for the tournament by right, with the top eight in the world rankings by March 2027 joining them automatically.

England are eighth in those rankings a place behind Afghanistan.

Their series-decider in Sri Lanka begins at 1430 local time (0900 GMT) on Tuesday.