Joyce looks forward

Ed Joyce is keen for the squad to reunite © Getty Images

Ed Joyce has underlined England’s determination to move on from their weekend drinking mistakes and concentrate their efforts on reaching the next stage of the World Cup.

The Middlesex opener has found himself at the centre of a storm for the last few days with six of his team-mates being fined for partying until the early hours of Saturday morning, hours after their opening defeat to New Zealand and less than 48 hours before Sunday’s win over Canada.

But after the recriminations of the weekend, when Andrew Flintoff was also dropped and relieved of the vice-captaincy, England are now ready to draw a line under the incident and focus on Saturday’s final Group C encounter with Kenya.

Joyce has been quite shocked by the recent media frenzy

Joyce said: “It’s been a difficult two days or so and today is our first practice since the events and we’re just looking to get back into cricket now.

“I’ve never really encountered anything like this. It’s been a bit of a media frenzy and I’m not used to seeing so much stuff in a negative way in the newspapers back home so that’s been pretty difficult.

“Speaking to some of the management and some of the experienced players, this sort of attention has happened before and we will move on from it.

“If you do the wrong thing then you’re going to get in trouble from it, but the boys have said they are sorry and all we can do is move on.

“This is the England cricket team, we’ve got to make sure we’re doing the right thing and we’ve got to focus on our cricket for the rest of the tournament.”

The whole squad were put through their paces by angry coach Duncan Fletcher at the Gros Islet ground today after several days of meetings during which they have tried to bind together as a squad in an attempt to make amends for their behaviour on the pitch.

Joyce, playing his first World Cup, believes the only way to really move on from the incident is for the team and squad as a whole to begin showing some consistency on the pitch.

Joyce knows how important victory against Canada is © Getty Images

Victory over Kenya on Saturday should ensure England’s progress into the next stage of the tournament and Joyce believes victory over one of the big sides then could really lift confidence.

He said: “We’ve spent a lot of time together since it happened.

“We’d like to think we didn’t need something like this to galvanise us because we were confident coming into this World Cup after what we did against Australia.

“We had a poor performance against New Zealand first up but that can happen against a good side and it’s just a matter of getting another win under our belts, getting through to the Super Eight and getting a win against one of the big sides to boost our confidence for the latter stages.”

He added: “As a squad we don’t feel let down. It was a mistake and the boys involved have apologised to everyone and we just want to get on with life and get on with cricket.

“It’s been a difficult last few days for everyone and there have been a lot of cameras and a lot of people watching us and it’s just a matter of keeping our heads down and moving on now.”