‘Power of the mind’ propelling Eoin Morgan
As batsman heads to the UAE to lead England’s limited-overs sides, he tells Kevin Garside how self-belief can engender success and that his Test team ambitions are far from over
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Your support makes all the difference.The last time England lost their compass in the desert, Eoin Morgan was part of the problem. Almost four years on he hopes to be part of the solution. England’s one-day and T20 captain returns to the United Arab Emirates at the helm of a rejuvenated one-day squad seeking not only to restore morale after a dispiriting Test series defeat against Pakistan, but to advance his return to the five-day arena.
Alastair Cook identified three areas of concern, two of which offer Morgan reason to believe. The middle order is in urgent need of renewal and the fielding is blunt. Morgan cannot do much about the spin deficiencies identified by Cook, but he is a brilliant athlete with hands like flypaper. And he was once an innovative front-runner with the bat around whom England looked to shape the future before those exaggerated movements at the crease corrupted his compact rhythm.
At 29, 12 years younger than the marvellous Misbah-ul-Haq, he is easily young enough to come again as a Test batsman and with a head free of clutter – no jokes please about his cranium being emptied by Mitchell Starc – he hopes to use the one-day platform to demonstrate his value as an all-round cricketer of substance and perhaps slide a thought or two the way of the selectors.
“That is always the ambition and the drive is still there,” he tells The Independent. “I just haven’t been good enough to be in the [Test] squad. That’s disappointing. It is difficult to explain why that is. Last year when I had an allocated time to concentrate on red-ball cricket I saw quite a marked improvement in my game and had quite a good county year.
“Then last winter I played five months of white-ball cricket with T20 mixed in between. Having the time to dedicate to defensive technique, game plans and training the mind to get used to leaving the ball just wasn’t there. It’s a different approach, the ball behaves differently, you need to play it later, your technique needs to be sound and, above all, you need to be clear in your mind about what you are going to do. Scores are a great indicator of how clear your mind is and your technical stability. This summer in red-ball cricket my scores weren’t there.
“But I would love to be playing. I would love to have been in the UAE in the Test team. When I did play all three forms I found it easy going from one format to the other. The longer I’ve been out of the side the less easy I have found to chop and change. That said, playing well as skipper of the one-day team can only help. You need to keep putting in performances. When you do that you hope they will carry some weight. That’s my focus right now.”
And what of the bonce clattered so viciously by Starc at Old Trafford in September? Speaking at the NatWest OSCAs at Lord’s, Morgan says: “The head is good. I struggled for about a week after the incident. Concussion is not a great thing. It was a really good delivery. I have watched the footage hundreds of times and wondered what I would have done differently. I didn’t do much wrong. I just didn’t pick it up early enough. But a good ball bowled at 90mph is never easy to play no matter how good you are. That’s all behind me, no scar tissue physical or mental. I’m ready to go.”
It is a pity that the vibrant positivity that lit up the early summer against New Zealand and again in Ashes victory dissipated on the featureless featherbeds of the Middle East. Wicketkeeper Jos Buttler is the most obvious victim of the downward spiral. His omission from the final Test was a mercy, and he now finds himself in the same shelled-out trench as Morgan in early 2012, needing to rehabilitate an unpicked technique and restore equilibrium to a battered mind.
“Everything seemed to be going really well. But in the two years we have had with practically no break at all, the schedule takes its toll. The capabilities he has are not restricted to white-ball cricket. We have seen the potential he has with the bat and the gloves. He is an outstanding player and, hopefully, we will see more of that soon.”
Buttler was at the heart of England’s post-World Cup renaissance, overseen brilliantly by the equally productive Morgan. The memories of spring and the lessons learnt have not been wholly eroded by the Test reverse, leaving Morgan optimistic ahead of tomorrow’s warm-up match against Hong Kong and the first of four one-day internationals against Pakistan on Wednesday.
“We had seven changes from the World Cup squad that played in the first series against New Zealand,” he says. “New blood refreshes the whole squad. The attitude these guys have shown against the World Cup finalists in two cracking series tells you how far we have come. We spoke in the lead-up to the series about how we wanted to go about it, how positive we were going to be. We went out and scored 408, which was remarkable.
“I’ve been part of the team for quite a while, sat in meetings where we have said the same things and I’ve wondered if we could really pull it off. We did and the belief in the room was inspirational, guys taking things on. I’ve played in teams when we have almost feared guys like Trent Boult and Tim Southee, and here we were taking it to them. It’s the power of the mind.”
And what of the reconstituted coaching staff, whose first job is to park the disappointment of Test defeat and plug in to the re-energised one-day team, just as they did after the World Cup debacle? “Paul Farbrace was very influential in that. We were a team without a head coach. Bridging the gap could have been difficult, but the attitude and energy he showed certainly rubbed off on me as a captain. He plays a hugely significant part now in his role as assistant to TB [Trevor Bayliss]. Trevor is very relaxed, to the point, doesn’t speak any BS.
“We are building for the T20 World Cup [in India next spring]. We have a great group of young guys but there are still a couple of areas of concern, death bowling and taking wickets in the middle. It is getting guys used to doing things differently. We have guys who can do that – we just have to encourage it a little bit more. I am looking forward to it. To win a trophy in India would be incredible. We won it in 2010. It’s a great feeling. We want that again.”
Eoin Morgan was speaking at the NatWest Outstanding Service to Cricket Awards, recognising the contribution that volunteers make to the game. NatWest.com/Cricket
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