Did I expect England to beat Australia? Absolutely not. Did I expect the Australians to come out and play the brand of cricket that they did? Yes.

But did I expect England to compete? Absolutely. They did not, and that is a real concern. I thought they would lose, but I did not expect them to lose in this fashion. They are going to get criticised and rightly so, because they built themselves up, they let us all believe that this was going to be a big performance and that they were going to shock Australia. I do not think we saw that.

And the problem with losing in this fashion is that there are so many players who are now out of form. They play New Zealand in Wellington on Friday, and somehow they have to produce. England are nowhere near the best teams in the tournament. They will need everything going for them to cause a shock in the knockout stages - if they get that far.

Facing a quality team in New Zealand, England will need things to go in their favour. I see nothing negative in them being honest about that. The worrying sign is that England look like startled rabbits. Those dropped catches and fumbles early in the game sent a message to everyone watching: England are really fretting here.

Drubbings like the 111-run defeat last Saturday hurt a team big time. As much as they talk about dusting themselves down for Friday, there are four or five players who, inwardly, will have doubts. Moeen Ali is not in great form. Jos Buttler has not made a huge amount of runs. Chris Woakes has been hit for a few.

And then there is the skipper. Generally, a side reflects its captain’s mindset. And as much as I rate Eoin Morgan as a cricketer, I worry about his mindset at present. When you have had four ducks in five innings, you panic as a player. You walk to the middle, and all of a sudden those memories come back. It is impossible to block them out.

People say experience is a good thing, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes you think too much. When Morgan first came into the England side, he did not think. He just watched the ball and tried to hit it. At the moment, he looks like he is trying to play a technical game. He is almost trying to get himself in too much.

The last thing he needs is to go into his shell and think that he has to play a captain’s innings. I did that on a few occasions, both in Test cricket and one-day cricket, and you end up getting completely mixed up. When you take the captaincy on a temporary basis, you are not really doing the job. You talk to the coach a bit, you talk to the odd player, and then you just go out there and enjoy it.

When you are the full-time captain, you are involved in every meeting, every discussion. You have many more hours with the coach, and sometimes you can over-analyse. Morgan looks like the kind of cricketer who can work things out for himself.

He has a basic plan and now he just needs to get on with it. He does not need people pecking at him all day. I want to see the old Eoin Morgan back. He used to take risks. He was the X-factor player. I would tell him to go away over the next few days, hit some balls and rediscover that free spirit we have all enjoyed watching in one-day cricket.

Easier said than done, but he has seven One Day International hundreds. His strike rate is 85. He has three hundreds against Australia. So we know he can do it against the best. England’s bowlers have to do better under pressure. They are what I call a “50 per cent attack”. Fifty per cent of the time, they are very good. The rest of the time - the hard times, when the pitch is flat and the ball is not swinging - England are pathetic.

They are still rubbish at bowling under pressure against striking cricketers. This has been going on for a long time - all last winter, most of 2014, and in the tri-series. The top six still looks like a Test line-up to me. Look at Australia. Three of their top six, Aaron Finch, Glenn Maxwell, George Bailey, are not in the Test side.

I worry that England have stumbled across this new system, and yet still prefer Test-match style players to modern one-day players. Alex Hales should have been given a run in the side last year, but was not given that opportunity.

New Zealand have everything: power, agility in the field, a good captain in Brendon McCullum, variation in the bowling attack. The big question is whether they can cope with the expectations of a nation. Can they cope with the whole country talking about them winning the tournament for the first time?

For England, a step in the right direction would be if we get to the final 15 overs of the match, chasing or defending, and there is still a game on. We need a competitive performance to give everybody a boost, not least the 15 players in that dressing room.

You look at a captain leading the way. Unfortunately, Morgan is not leading the way, and England desperately need a performance from him. Then you look at McCullum: the first two balls of the World Cup, on home territory, with everyone watching, and he smacks them for four.

That was a message to everyone in New Zealand: “We’re not going to die wondering. We’re going to continue to play in this aggressive style.” And that is what Morgan has to do. He has to go down playing his way.

- The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2015