After a miserable couple of months in Australia for England’s Test team, Eoin Morgan’s white-ball renegades helped to lift the gloom with a record run chase in the first ODI at the MCG.
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Jason Roy’s freewheeling 151-ball 180, a new record for an England batsman in an ODI, typified the approach of a team that has won seven of its last eight series in the 50-over format – a far cry from the embattled group of players who exited the 2015 World Cup at the earliest opportunity on their last visit to Australia.
From a personal perspective, Morgan will be looking to rediscover the form which saw him hit three centuries in the space of eight innings in 2017, as well as scoring crucial half-centuries against Bangladesh and Australia in the Champions Trophy. By contrast, his last four ODI knocks have yielded only 30 runs.
“It’s so strange,” says England’s white-ball skipper as he considers his boom-or-bust record with the bat. “Yes, I drop in and out of form. I do well when I’m in form and I struggle horrifically when I’m out form.
“I’ve been trying to make those periods of bad form shorter. I haven’t put my finger on why, but the more games you play the more comfortable you become about not being in form. It’s a strange mentality to have but certainly when I was out of form in the first few years that I played international cricket I didn’t really want to bat – I knew I wasn’t going to get any runs.
“Compare that to now, and all I want to do is bat, because it’s the only way I’m going to turn things around. To change that mentality has taken a lot of time but it’s something I feel a lot more comfortable talking to other people about now, and I think that just comes with experience.”
