Eoin Morgan: A team captain
Morgan is a man who backs his players to the core
Dubai: Eoin Morgan has been England’s white-ball team captain since 2015, who successfully led his team to the 2019 World Cup title. He is a man who backs his players to the core.
I have known Eoin for more than four years since our first meeting happened back in 2017 during the inaugural T10 league in Sharjah where he led his team Kerala Kings to victory.
He has also captained my Delhi Bulls team in the year 2019 where I had the opportunity to spend more time with him. A very calm and cool character in all situations, but carries a very shrewd cricketing head on his shoulders. That’s Eoin.
When I asked him about his journey at the 2015 World Cup where England were knocked out in the league stage, he was honest in admitting that England were playing a different brand of cricket during that period compared to rest of the world.
With the support of Andrew Strauss who backed him with the players required for aggressive and fearless brand of cricket, England have never looked back after the 2015 World Cup debacle.
And the journey to winning the 2019 World Cup title is because of that preparation put in by Andrew Strauss along with Morgan.
England could achieve the glory under Morgan that no other captain in English cricket history could ever achieve. However, Morgan says that getting the best from the players is a very important aspect of being a good captain. He further stresses on the point that the captain is as good as his team and if the captain can understand the players and their psyche, you can get the maximum out of them.
Moreover, he insists that one could not gauge a player on the basis of a tournament but should only be adjudged on the basis of the player’s potential and back them to the end.
When he was recently asked about Jofra Archer’s commitment to Test cricket, which was questioned by Michael Vaughan, he backed Archer by saying that players like Archer are one-of-a-kind match winner and they will have their good and bad days.
No wonder Morgan’s team are at the top of the rankings in T20 now and are the favourites to beat India in T20 series, which began on Friday, and for the World Cup in October.
England have drawn first blood by winning the first T20 comfortably and Morgan was spot on with his bowling changes and backing Archer who proved to be the main man in keeping India to a below par total.