Eoin Morgan is not a man who gets easily carried away. His demeanour remains more or less the same in defeat or victory as he offers a cool, clinical assessment of where his one-day teams are heading.
Nonetheless he could hardly be expected to hide his satisfaction at England’s progress in the UAE, especially after his side had snatched a bizarre victory via a super over in Sharjah in the final game of the tour. For the last half hour of that match England seemed to be losing yet they somehow scrambled to a tie, whereupon Chris Jordan produced his brilliant over in the tie-breaker.
Morgan’s analysis of his team’s success – they won six of their seven matches against Pakistan – could not ignore Jordan’s efforts on Monday, six balls which may have transformed the fast bowler’s chances of making the cut for the World Cup squad. “We’ve countered the foreign conditions to a certain extent over the last three weeks but we haven’t played a complete performance throughout both series,” said Morgan. “We have had two perfect individual performances: CJ’s [Jordan’s] super over and Jos’s [Buttler’s] hundred in Dubai, two contributions that at a World Cup could change the outcome. I know there’s more to come in the changing room.”
Of course Buttler practises his remarkable array of 21st century shots assiduously just as Jordan diligently concentrates on his yorkers in the nets. CJ did not get where he is today without a lot of hard graft behind the scenes. Hence a great super over.
There is a highly commendable ethos of learning plus an eagerness to explore the limits of their talent among this group of players, which must give heart to the captain and his coaching team. “I think we’re still in the development stage,” said Morgan. “But it’s pretty exciting; the acceleration of our learning curve is happening quite quickly because we’re winning, growing in confidence and building momentum. We’re learning as much as we can from each other as opposed to back-tracking and learning from the opposition. If we can take that into South Africa [in February] and on from there, who knows?
“We’re in the best position we could be at the moment. We’re a very new side; we’ve only played five games together as a squad. We have 15 athletes. Fitness is a priority of ours.
“We’re always striving to improve our fielding. Death-bowling is one of our weaknesses and we don’t have the privilege of playing in a high-skilled domestic competition that’s as intense as the Big Bash or the Indian Premier League. So we need to give the guys in the squad as much opportunity to perform under pressure as possible.”
The perceived weakness of England’s domestic T20 competition is a regular theme of Morgan’s and it has some validity.
Although there was a sprinkling of world-class cricketers playing T20 in England in 2015 – Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Kumar Sangakkara, Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell all made appearances – there is often an absence of high-quality bowling.
However Morgan’s argument is not completely watertight. If the standard is so low in England how is it that Sam Billings and James Vince can prosper so soon at international level or that Morgan himself can struggle to dominate when leading Middlesex in the T20? One obvious problem is that the three-format men, who have recently included Joe Root, Buttler and Moeen Ali, rarely have an opportunity to play T20 cricket beyond the international arena.
But there is no doubting Morgan’s impact as captain of England over the past six months. This is now his team; he has grown in confidence as a leader and he has performed well along the way. He is as secure in his position as Alastair Cook is in charge of the Test team.
This time there will be no late swerves in leadership by England before an imminent ICC tournament (in this case the World T20 in India in March). But there will be some agonising among the selectors. “It’s important we keep these 17-20 players together and get as much experience as we can”, said Morgan. But he can only take 14 others with him to the World Cup.
