ICC World Cup 2019 | People Were Waiting for England to Fail: Bairstow

England opener Jonny Bairstow has vented his frustration at a section of critics insisting that "people are waiting for us to fail" at the World Cup.

The hosts and pre-tournament favorites have suffered three defeats including two in their last two games leaving them in a must-win situation going into the India and New Zealand clashes. Bairstow though said that it was important for England to cancel out all the negative noise and stay true to themselves.

"I was on the radio this morning. I was surprised with a clip of [Michael] Vaughan's comments at 8.30am. Bloody hell. That's pretty rich," Bairstow said at a sponsor event. "Because we've done so well, any opportunity for someone to see we've lost two games, they were always going to jump on it."

"People were waiting for us to fail. They are not willing us on to win, in many ways, they are waiting for you to get that loss, so they can jump on your throat. It's a typical English thing to do, in every sport."

Former captain Michael Vaughan suggested that England bowing out in the group stage would mark their worst World Cup campaign. Kevin Pietersen, in a tweet, wrote that he felt Eoin Morgan was "backing away" from Mitchell Starc's bowling, a comment that did not go down too well with the England captain.

"The comments and things like that, you can give it too much air time and then all of a sudden, before you know it, it's a big thing and it's actually really not," Bairstow said. "We've not let that in. Because the way we go about it and the way we play, it doesn't make a difference what's been said here, what's been said there.

"We've done it for such a long period of time and this group has been together for near-on three years now, if not longer. So just because we've lost two games - yes it's in a crunch tournament - and people start talking, it's not going to change the way we go about it. We just have to be relaxed. The more you tense up, then the more you're going to go into your shell and therefore not play how you've been playing."

Bairstow admitted that England had messed up a few games in the tournament but there was no reason to believe that they cannot defeat India in their next game especially when they had done so last summer. England will face a rampant India, who are unbeaten in the tournament so far, in Edgbaston on Sunday (June 30) in a must-win clash.

"It's going to be interesting against India, we obviously know the following that they've got and it should be a cracking atmosphere," said Bairstow. "Last summer we played really good cricket against them and we won that series and we won it well so I think we go about it the same way we went about it and have been going about our cricket. Our method doesn't change.

"Granted we've lost a couple of games, but all of a sudden if you go striving for different things from what have stood you in good stead over a period of time, then you're searching for something that you are probably not going to find the answer to. Whereas the formula we've had has got us to where we have been."

"Yes, we've had a couple of lapses but if we'd have had those lapses six months ago it wouldn't have been quite as much of an issue. But we've had them at the time we have and we've got to bounce back."