Southampton: England skipper Eoin Morgan has admitted that the defeat to Sri Lanka on Friday came as a shocker to the host team.
Did he have any indication even at halfway stage whether Sri Lanka’s total would be a problem to chase? The dejected skipper said: “Actually, no. But probably [when they scored] about 40 or 50 more ... Obviously, not accounting for the way that we batted.”
When asked what went wrong with his team’s batting, he remarked that his batsmen had not followed the basics that must be kept in mind during a run chase.
“During a run chase, partnerships are very important. And we struggled to get enough partnerships going, or even one substantial one. There were a couple of individual innings but that is not good enough to win a game.”
England are now being seen as a team of poor chasers, and will that now be troubling them, especially on the eve of their important match against arch-rivals Australia?
“I think when we get beaten, we tend to come back quite strong. We tend to resort to being aggressive, smart and play positive cricket. Let’s hope that is the case on Tuesday.”
Morgan was not surprised by Lasith Malinga’s show and said his team deserved to lose the match.
“Mally has been around for a long time. Him coming in and bowling like that isn’t surprising at all. We didn’t deserve to win today’s game. The message is quite simple. We need to keep reminding ourselves of our basics all along while we play the way we do.”
Being the No. 1 team and losing to Sri Lanka, has it affected the confidence level of the team?
“We are not going to win every game in this World Cup, but it is important to go back to the process that’s taken us to being a strong side in the world. There were a couple of challenges that presented themselves with the wicket and we didn’t overcome them.”
What was, then, the turning point of the match?
“I would say there were quite a few wickets that were turning points. We have guys coming in at No. 6 who average 40, No. 7 averaging 30. We bat all the way down. So every single one is quite significant because any of them could have established a partnership that would have won us the game.”
