Morgan shows off England class… and SPIN logo

England lost the fifth ODI at Trent Bridge, despite posting 299, to now trail 5-0. But for SPIN’s Eoin Morgan, at least, there were some of those famous ‘positives’ to be taken as he hit his first half-century in England ODI colours, getting to wave his bat complete with SPIN logo at the crowds and cameras for the first time.

England went down with 10 balls to spare after a masterclass in timing a chase from Ricky Ponting (126) and Michael Clarke (52). There was a masterclass-in-reverse from England’s hapless fielders that left skipper Andrew Strauss with a face like thunder by the end.

Strauss helmed England’s previous ODI nadir on home soil, the 5-0 defeat to Sri Lanka in 2006; here, there are still two more games to go.

Even the monosyllablic skipper concurred, at his unusually terse post-match press conference, that Eoin Morgan was a “talented individual” and that his batting had been “superb”.

Morgan, batting at 6, had top-scored in England’s innings, hitting 58 off 41 balls.

Morgan’s innings included four fours and three sixes. Far from being full of his trademark flips and sweeps, the knock included plenty of clean baseball-style hitting over mid-wicket off the fast bowlers.

The knock repaid the faith shown by the selectors after a season in which Morgan has been short of runs at county level.

Previously, Morgan, who turned 23 last week, had played 23 ODIs for Ireland, hitting five 50s and a century.

Read Eoin Morgan’s blog of the season here.

My England call-up and avoiding the bar at a wedding

August 16

Sunday morning. I heard I was in the one-day squad for the NatWest Series and the ICC Champions Trophy. I don’t think I did anything wrong when I was in the squad at the ICC World Twenty20 and it’s great they’re keeping the faith with me. 

I’d just flown back to London for our Pro40 game with Leicester: I’d flown straight out to Dublin on Friday after the end of the county game with Essex, for my brother’s wedding on the Saturday. Strange being at a wedding knowing I had to be a professional athlete again back in another country 24 hours later. I tried to stay as far away from the bar as possible!

I can’t wait to join up with England. There’s no denying I have struggled a bit in county cricket this summer. But I’ve had a hint of bad luck along the way: I’ve been caught down the leg-side three times and had a couple of unlucky decisions. I keep a diary of how I get out. A lot of players do, even though, at international level, you’ll have an analyst logging it all anyway. 

Nothing’s leaping out from the log-book about where I’m going wrong; maybe I’m losing concentration and choosing the wrong shots, so I have to work on my decision-making. I’ll work it out for myself, though it’s good to have had someone like Owais Shah around at Middlesex this summer for advice.

We had five championship games in five weeks and I think when you’re low on runs that can be quite tough: you’re playing a lot, but not getting much chance to practice. And, for me, I’m still feeling my way as a four-day batter. One-day cricket is my bread and butter: I love it, it’s what I’ve always played. M y championship cricket is still developing.

August 23

I had the day at home for the last day of the Ashes which was brilliant. I was delighted for the boys. 

As someone who has been inside the England set-up I didn’t give any credence at all to all the talk after the fourth Test of bringing back Mark Ramprakash or Rob Key. That was all generated by the media. Having seen the way the set-up works, I thought there was no chance of picking someone from left-field. As I’ve seen with my own selection for the one-dayers, there’s a culture of continuity and backing the players who you’ve rated all along.

Having sat on my sofa at home watching the Ashes and gone down the local for a couple of drinks to celebrate, it’s great to know that a week later, I’ll be in the middle of it, playing Australia. Awesome. I’ve not played the Aussies much before – the game at Worcester for the Lions in July and a game for Ireland at the 2007 World Cup when Glenn McGrath bowled us out for 93. 

August 25

Fly to Belfast with England. We have a team meeting and the coach and the captain talk. They say there’s a lot of talent in the room, we’re a young side and we should go out and play our own positive cricket. My own aims for the series? To take any chance I get!

My first game as Middlesex captain

August 5-8

Kent v Middlesex (Canterbury)

Shaun Udal pulled out injured at the last minute, so I got to captain my first championship game – and to lead us to our first championship win of the season. Kent are a long way clear at the top of the table and one of the strongest sides in the division so it was great. It’s been a tough year for us but after this game, we had a good vibe, getting back to what we had last year after we won the Twenty20.

I’m not officially the vice-captain, but I captained a one-day game at the start of the season, so I knew I would be in the frame if Shaun missed a match. I do actually have a lot of experience leading sides: I led all the Irish age-group sides as I was growing up and have captained Middlesex seconds a lot, too.

It was a low-scoring game. There were 21 wickets on the first day: we were all out for 155 and then we bowled them out for 141. The pitch had some extra bounce in it but as a player I think you have to get used to all that: you don’t want a culture of excuses; it creates a bad atmosphere.

We bowled better than them, I think. Murali Kartik took 4/53 in the second innings. The last pair – Simon Cook and Amjad Khan – put on 86 but they were about all that held us up. 

But we’re still bottom of Division 2, with on win in 12. No doubt about it, we have struggled this year. I think, though, maybe Kent aside, the teams in the division are pretty close and often quite small things can be important: we had to chase 186 to beat Surrey off 25 overs in May – and fell two runs short; against Essex at Chelmsford, it rained on the last day when we were well-placed. If one of those had gone slightly differently, it might have given us the momentum we needed.

The weather, too: if you’re playing on decent pitches and games go to four days, any time lost to rain seriously affects the chance of a result: half our games have been draws and a good number were draws that we had much the better of.

Advice from Warne and getting turned away from Lord’s

July 6 

Middlesex Panthers v Rajasthan Royals, Lord’s

The first time an IPL side has played a one-off charity game in England and the Rajasthan Royals beat us comfortably. The pitch was quite worn and trying to get Shane Warne away was very difficult so that bogged us down to start with. I hadn’t played Warne before. I’ve watched a hell of a lot of him growing up. ‘Just watch the ball,’ that’s all I was thinking. Play it as you see it. Don’t get distracted by him. He does have that air, that you might be playing in his garden or something: he stamps his authority on the ground straight away. You have to ignore all that and just play the ball.

We all had a chat with Warne, as a team, before the game. Shaun Udal knows him well from their Hampshire days so he arranged for him to come and have an informal chat with to us and he was very good. He had some good insights on cricket and life in general and how we should try and pick our season up and get some momentum up and trying to get promotion. It was fantastic to get that from a guy like him. 

I wasnt really surprised by anything Warne threw at me on the field: I find picking bowlers very easy - playing the delivery is the hard part. It doesn’t count for anything unless you can play it.

Sohail Tanvir is someone else I hadn’t faced before it’s true he has a very unusual, whippy action but I didn’t get much of a look at it – we needed to get boundaries and the first ball I faced off him was the one I got out to, the one I tried to lap-sweep…

Warne’s advice was partly about getting together as a team more often: it’s difficult for us to do it in London, which he could relate to because Victoria don’t have their own hom ground: they take their gear home with them from the MCG and don’t have their own lockers, like us at Middlesex.

When you don’t actually have a proper home ground, it can make it harder to get that team bonding going. I mean we have lockers at Lord’s – we just can’t get to them! You can’t turn up in the middle of a Test match because you’ve left your one-day pads in your locker!

(Of course, at Lord’s, it can be hard getting into a Test match even if you’re playing in it: I did 12th man for the Test match last year and on the first day I turned up I got turned away. The guy said I needed a pass and I said: “Well, I’m doing 12th man.” And he goes: ‘You’re not coming in without a pass.” So I turned away and walked off - but one of the other guys spotted me and vouched for me an they let me in.)

In terms of running his team, Shane was very laid back. He talked about being switched on as soon as you’re called upon - that’s what really matters. If you want to go and hit 50 balls beforehand or 50,000 balls before a game do that - it’s down to the individual. The Royals didn’t even go and warm up before the toss had happened. Warne bowled a couple of balls, presumably becaiuse he hadn’t played in a while. But it was all very laidback.

Having watched a lot of the second IPL, I’d say the standard is noticeably higher than the Twenty20 Cup: not just because of the overseas stars they have there, with four in every team. The local talent is something too: I’ve been to India three or four times and you come up against net bowlers - nobodies, basically - who you feel could comfortably play in county cricket. There’s just so many good players over there.

The Aussies looked full tilt to me…

I look back on the World Twenty20 as a missed opportunity, for the England team. We gained momentum going into the West Indies game then struggled in what turned out to be a nine-over game decided by Duckworth-Lewis.

Disappointing. I think with our bowling we could and should have defended the target, even though it was only 80 off nine overs. There was a lot of belief within the side, especially when we put in a serious performance on the crucial D Day against Pakistan - and then to beat the champions India a week later… there was a lot of belief within the side.

After that, the England management were like, ‘We’ll be in touch’. I know it’s now a case of gettign my head down and getting some runs. I’m feeling good at the crease, even though I haven’t been spending that much time at the crease in recent weeks.

July 1 

England Lions v Australia, Worcester

 I was back with Middlesex for a couple of Twenty20 games then away with the Lions again, the big game against Australia at Worcester. Ricky Ponting said Australia weren’t on full tilt in their warm-up games, that their preparation was all about begin ready for Cardiff. Well, the spell of bowling I faced from Brett Lee was certainly up there. He put on a magnificent display of reverse swing which everyone struggled with. Even the guys who were in and playing really well at the time found it very difficult. So for the guys coming in – me and Vikram and Ian Bell - we had to battle with it. 

Playing for the Lions is slightly odd: it is a big opportunity - if the Ashes goes in favour of the Aussies it bodes well in your favour if you have scored some runs for the Lions; it’s like some kind of audition with the England selectors all stood on the balcony watching. It’s true that you are competing very directly with your team-mates: but there’s a lot of that goes on in cricket and you just get used to it. Batting is a selfish game as it is.

Pressure on India and Dilshan’s genius

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The fact that we came back so strongly against Pakistan last week after the defeat to Holland gives us a good precedent in preparing to play India today at Lord’s. Seeing India lose to West Indies reminded us that they are beatable and that, as champions, there’s an enormous pressure on them to stay in this fantastic tournament. More than there is on England, I think. The expectations on India are very high. We certainly believe that if we go out with the same fearless approach we showed against Pakistan, we’ll beat India.

After losing to South Africa in the first Super 8s game on Thursday, we had Friday off. I’ve just moved into my new flat so I spent the day moving wardrobes and painting walls. I mean, I was taking it easy: I’m not going to get injured shifting furniture in the middle of a World Cup and end up as a quiz question.

The team are all together in a hotel but I live close to Lord’s now and since we spend so much time on the road anyway, it was nice to spend a day at home. It was relaxing to get out of cricket mode. And in a big tournament, that can be important.

Saturday, we trained. We had a good game of football to start with, then some individual preparation. Once you’re in the tournament it’s about mental preparation. The football brings a competitive edge out of people and helps us to relax and not get uptight. Who’s the best footballer in the England side? I’d say… Jimmy Anderson. He’s in the mould of, well, a Frank Lampard.

After football, we worked on our individual skills; I just work on my basics throughout the competition, keep me ticking over.

The tournament has been awesome. I love Twenty20 anyway - but turning up mid-afternoon and playing Twenty20 in front of a packed house every time, with the support we’re getting. It’s phenomenal. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Looking at the other teams, Tillekeratne Dilshan is an absolute phenomenon. I was watching him a lot during the IPL. The way he plays, with so many unusual shots might make people bracket him with my style; I’m just fascinated to see a right-hander do it. I’m not sure he actually has all that many shots that I don’t have: I’ve used the flip that puts the ball straight back over the wicket-keeper’s head, for example. So I think it’s not so much how he plays his innovative shots, technically, that interests me, as the times that he plays them and the way he has uses them to string such a good run of innings together at this level.

He’s obviously a very good player at the top of the order, full-stop, but then given time, he can innovate too. I suppose people might associate those sweeps and flicks and flip shots with batting against the spinners in the middle overs but in some ways it’s easier to play them when there’s pace on the ball in the early overs.

Did we feel as if South Africa were playing a different game to us on Thursday? Not really. They’re not invincible. Beforehand we had talked about the last time we had played them, last summer when we beat them 4-0: as a team, you can take confidence from those sort of series. Obviously they’re a strong side but on a different day I think we could have beaten them.

After we lost Kevin and we were 25/3, Owais and Paul got a bit of a partnership going but after that we struggled. It can happen. Some people have said that our shot selection might have been better but I think that’s unfair. The wicket was pretty slow and losing wickets regularly meant that new batsmen had to work out a way of moving the game on as soon as they came in. And the South Africans have two very good one-day spinners, in Botha and van der Merwe. And you don’t want to come in and start smashing it about straight away - but as it happened, every release-shot we tried didn’t come off. That can happen in Twenty20 cricket.

Wayne Parnell is turning out to be one of the bowlers of the tournament. I played against him for Middlesex against Kent early in the season. He doesn’t swing it or reverse it like Umar Gul. He just hits the deck hard: in some ways, nothing out of the ordinary, but he bowls those angles, left-arm over the wicket, which makes the difference.

We had a debrief after the game. The captain and the coach both spoke and then other players chipped in. Having not played, it’s difficult to give an opinion or make a valid point so I tend to keep quiet.

On Sunday, I’ll get to Lord’s about halfway through the second innings of the first game. Ireland are playing Sri Lanka so maybe a little bit earlier. I’ve been in touch with a couple of the Irish guys during the tournament. The captain William Porterfield, is my best mate and we went for dinner the night before the South Africa game. We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten - I played for Ireland under-13s when I was 10 and he was the captain.

William’s obviously with Gloucestershire, but most of the Irish team are still amateurs - they work all week and only play cricket on a Saturday, so that does give them a real passion about their cricket. To find themselves in the middle of this amazing tournament instead of working at their day jobs gives them a real drive: any ‘professional’ team that shows any weakness can come unstuck against that. I saw it when we lost to Holland - the sheer passion that the Associate countries can bring to a tournament like this. That’s how the upsets happen.

We’ve had a bad game, then a good game, then a bad game… so we’re due a good game again today against India. Everyone’s optimistic about the talent we have in the squad and our chances of getting things going again.

Previous entries

Losing to Netherlands, beating Pakistan

How and why I play those Twenty20 shots

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Eoin Morgan World Twenty20 blog: Netherlands & Pakistan

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. The latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 World Cup.

As it turned out, I think losing to Holland did England a lot of favours. The extra pressure put on us in the 48 hours before the game with Pakistan allowed us to go out and throw caution to the wind and play fearlessly. It was almost ideal. T20 cricket should be played instinctively; you should express yourself and that’s how we were against Pakistan. The crowd at the Oval was unbelievable. It was the best atmosphere I’ve been a part of. Ridiculous. The support was magnificent. The fact that we’ve bounced back so well and so quickly will give us a lot of confidence going into the Super8s.

Losing to Holland was a massive shock. I’ve been playing against them for years and I’d never seen them play like that before. It certainly came as a surprise to me. Because I’d had so much experience against the Dutch, I had been giving the guys the low-down on the Dutch batters and bowlers in the build-up to the game. Or what I thought was the low-down! But nothing prepared us for what they threw at us. They played so well. We’d been in high spirits, we felt we’d hit the ground running with the ODIs and our T20 warm-up games. So it was a massive shock for us.

I certainly didn’t have any idea that Tom de Grooth could play like that. I’ve played with and against Tom for years. We spent three months together at an ICC High Performance camp in South Africa and I’d certainly never seen him strike the ball like that. Every time we looked to peg them back, they found a boundary - either by smashing it or by getting an inside edge. It just seemed to be their day.

It’s true that there’s probably less video footage of the Associate nations, so in some ways the bigger teams are less well equipped to prepare for games against them. But, really, it’s not down to the video footage or laptop work: it’s more down to whether you’ve faced certain players before. So Associate nations do have a small advantage in that way.

It’s difficult to pin point where we went wrong. Obviously we could have done better in the field; we missed those run outs. But I don’t think we played that badly. We just needed another 10 or 15 runs.

At the time - even though we hadn’t got any partnerships going after Luke and Ravi had set things up – we were pretty happy with the total we’d set. It wasn’t a case of underestimating Holland and saying, ‘Oh, 160 is enough’, it was more backing our bowlers. The only real mistakes we made were the run out chances: we must have had the chance to hit the stumps five or six times and if we’d taken those the result might have been different.

Our ground fielding and catching was pretty good considering the conditions: it was raining for the best part of the last eight or nine overs and the ball was pretty slippy.

It was quiet in the dressing room afterwards. Everyone devastated. Shell shocked, more than anything. Really down. We spoke about it and picking ourselves up. The belief was that we could beat Pakistan.

Between games, we didn’t really talk about the prospect of going out of the tournament. We were focused on what we had to do positively: we had to beat Pakistan, we had to bring our ‘A’ game and play fearless cricket. If you’re tentative, you’re lost. It’s all about momentum, taking everything to the opposition. The whole experience geed us up. We went out on Sunday with a point to prove.

I was left out of the 11 against Pakistan. We were playing on a wicket that had been used three times already and we’d seen it turn in the first game of the day – South Africa against Scotland – so we decided to play two spinners. The balance of the side worked brilliantly. Graeme came in and bowled fantastically. Adil just nailed it, too. The Dutch game was his first, but he’s a very fast learner and always very keen to learn. He spends a lot of time with Mushtaq Ahmed. Adil’s a very skilful bowler in the way that he can change his game straight away.

We set our stall out unbelievably well, with Kev and Luke and Owais, which put a bit of a downer on the Pakistani guys. In Twenty20 runs are so valuable; so when you see catches go down or misfields, you get that feeling that the opposition aren’t quite as up for it or haven’t worked quite as hard as you have. It gives you a little mental advantage.

Luke is doing fantastically - he seems to have recaptured the same form he had a couple of years ago in county cricket. It’s great to see him doing it in international cricket now - he’s such a great talent and a lovely fella as well.

I ended up playing a decent role in the win. Owais came off after six overs of the Pakistan innings - a hamstring twinge - and I was on the field for the rest of the innings. The ball seemed to follow me around, and I picked up two catches. I’m sure Owais will be fine for Thursday.

I was just really pleased to get to play a part. I do a lot of work with the fielding coach, Richard Halsall. Because I don’t bowl, 30 to 40 per cent of my training time is spent on fielding. I work on it quite hard. I played other sports as a kid - rugby, football, gaelic football, pretty much every sport - so I’m quite well co-ordinated and it comes naturally to me.

Monday I was back at home. Chilling out. Watching the cricket on TV. Going out for dinner with friends. We’re not ‘in-camp’ at this stage. We trained pretty hard ahead of the tournament but we all went our separate ways after Sunday. Of course I watched the Ireland win over Bangladesh. Fantastic. It’s great to see them doing so well. The O’Brien brothers thrive on playing in the big competitions and the spotlight being put on them. It was the first time I’d watched Ireland in a major competition - I was playing for them until April - and it’s brilliant to see them do so well. Playing with Ireland in the [2007] World Cup was the best time in my life. But for me, it was always the dream to play for England. Everyone in Ireland knew that and they’ve all been pleased for me. I haven’t heard one begrudging word.

England are meeting up again in Nottingham on Tuesday evening for a game of football. Playing not watching. I love it. I play upfront in the mould of, say, Robbie Keane. Playing for Spurs or Ireland, that is. We’ll practice together – cricket – on Wednesday, before the game against South Africa on Thursday. We’ve a good bunch of lads; as a newcomer, you feel at home very quickly. Everybody’s been really welcoming and easy to get along with. It’s been so easy coming into the changing room, especially as we’ve (mainly) been winning.

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Eoin Morgan: how (and why) I play those amazing T20 shots

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When I started at Middlesex I was a conventional player. But I began to feel I needed other options. Limited-overs cricket is pushing the game forward and scores of 300 in 50-over cricket are par now. You can’t afford to be bogged down and scoring at a run a ball is no longer acceptable. In Twenty20, especially, you have to go at eight or nine an over at least. 

I went through a period where I was getting a bit tied down and, not being the size of someone like Graeme Hick, I was looking at other scoring opportunities rather than just hitting over the top. That’s when I started to practise these sweeps. 

I don’t think I’ve ever played out a maiden in Twenty20 cricket.

I  started playing the sweep shots about three years ago. I hadn’t played much limited-overs cricket until then and Twenty20, in particular, has given players a real spur to improve. I’ve practised the shots hard – as much as I would practise the cut or a pull – and while I started out only playing them against the slow bowlers, I’ll play them against anyone now. I play them in the championship, too.
I think I played the reverse sweep twice during my last championship hundred, against Leicestershire.

You do have to premeditate the strokes, but the idea is that they feel like second nature. I don’t feel any need to play them just because people know I can. That’s the whole point of practice; it becomes instinctive. I still hit most of my sixes over mid-wicket with flicks off the seamers.

It’s great to put some pressure on the bowler; to make them change their plans; to get them wondering where they’re going to bowl next. Sometimes I’ll play the shot just to get them to change the field.

Often they’ll move mid-wicket to protect them from the reverse sweep and that opens up a gap. I like it when you can hear the fielding side becoming irritated. Bowlers hate the sweeps, too: they just don’t know where to bowl. It does make it very hard to set a field. 

“The grip for the reverse-reverse sweep  is the same as the grip for hurling, which is a sport I played when I was young, so I feel very comfortable with it. I read recently that the physical skills you learn between the ages of nine and 12 are hugely influential and that’s the period
I was playing hurling. I think it gave me strong and flexible wrists and an instinctive sense that the ball could be hit in different areas.”

A full T20 masterclass from Eoin, complete with sequence photography, appears in the July issue of SPIN, in shops June 5. Eoin will be blogging for Spin throughout the ICC World T20.

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. The latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 World Cup. 

Eoin Morgan joins SPIN