Wasim Jaffer takes aim, mocks Michael Vaughan and England after ODI rankings slide: ‘Against spirit of cricket’

Wasim Jaffer had a sly dig at Michael Vaughan prepared and ready to go after England were humbled by South Africa in Leeds.

A fixture of the last few years of a burgeoning India-England rivalry has been the war of words online between former batters for each country. Wasim Jaffer and Michael Vaughan have regularly locked horns, especially on social media, happy to rub more salt into the wound whenever the other’s team suffers a poor result or a setback.

Michael Vaughan and Wasim Jaffer were at loggerheads once again.

With England suffering a chastening defeat at the hands of South Africa in the opening ODI match of their three-match series against the Proteas, being bowled out for just 131, the team slipped down as far as eighth in the ICC’s men’s ODI rankings. This is well off the pace for a team which lifted the ODI World Cup just 6 years ago and regularly wants to be considered amongst the world’s best across all formats.

Nevertheless, with this painful result helping England reach a nadir that nobody in the higher levels of English cricket will be proud of, the perfect time had arrived for Jaffer to direct a dig right towards Michael Vaughan. With a picture of the ranking leaderboard that showed England all the way down in eighth while India were living it up at the top of the charts, Jaffer tagged Vaughan’s X account and sent some ribbing his way.

England’s struggles in the 50-over format continue after a forgettable outing in the 2023 World Cup while trying to defend their trophy, and another all-hands-on-deck crisis which cost Jos Buttler his role as captain after a resounding failure in the Champions Trophy. Harry Brook stepped in to take over the captaincy reins, but start to life hasn’t treated him too kindly either.

It was Keshav Maharaj who did the damage in the first ODI as he continued his strong year in international cricket at the age of 35, while Aiden Markram scored a 23-ball half-century to walk the chase home with ease.