ON THIS DAY
Follow UsEngland’s first captain to lift the 50-over World Cup and, more importantly, the man to indoctrinate a fearless approach in their limited-overs side that propelled them to the top of white-ball cricket, Eoin Morgan was born on September 10, 1986, in Dublin.
An aspiring cricketer as a child, Morgan was known for being innovative to get boundaries and was quite adept at playing the sweep shots. He would, however, realise much later that he could transfrom his individual knack of scoring quick runs into a team mentality.
Morgan became a gifted Irish talent at a young age making his international debut against Scotland at the age of 16, where he would fall agonisingly short of his maiden ton by just a run. But, his rare batting approach didn’t go unnoticed and Middlesex gave him a chance as soon as he turned 19.
Though Morgan had a quiet 2007 World Cup campaign for Ireland, he was fast cementing the no.3 position for Middlesex with an eye on the England team. And by 2009 he'd qualified for England, and subsequently made the squads for both the T20 World Cup and Champions Trophy.
A 23-year-old Morgan would leave Ireland astray before the T20 World Cup but wasted no time making a mark for England in the ICC Champions Trophy. His 67 (34) against South Africa caught eyeballs before he dismantled the Proteas yet again with a 85-run knock in 45 balls during England’s T20 tour.
Morgan’s ability to score quick runs with hard-hitting shots while batting down the order led many to believe that England’s prolonged search for a finisher was finally reaching fruition. His non-English approach to batting made him quite a favoiurite for IPL teams, so much so that and he was the only English player to get a contract during the IPL 2010 auction.
However, Morgan’s adventurous approach meant he wouldn’t be consistent and the aggressive batsman was seeing getting benched every now and then owing to his dry spells. He never changed his playing style though, and was called up as a replacement for Kevin Pietersen and he would go onto record two fifties in the tournament.
While Morgan was an exciting option in ODIs and T20Is, his Test outings were underwhelming, despite him having centuries against Pakistan and India. Juggling white ball and red ball cricket meant Morgan’s consistency would further sway and he went a year and 17 innings without a 50.
The player recognized it early on and following a few horrible Test outings, Morgan decided to leave Test cricket in 2012 to focus on his strengths. In 16 Test matches, Morgan scored 700 runs at an average of 30.43.
Having scored 560 ODI runs in both 2013 and 2014, Morgan was definitely an exciting option in the 50-over format and Alastair Cook’s poor form as an ODI skipper handed Morgan the chance to lead the English side during the 2015 World Cup.
With very little time to prepare and a chaotic dressing room to sort out, Morgan had a largely unsuccessful in the tournament. But, he recognized the issue that was preventing England from doing well in ODIs for decades, and Morgan wasn’t afraid of demanding an approach that didn’t sit well with ECB administration.
A fan of Brandon McCullum’s New Zealand side, who appealed to Morgan’s aggressive approach, the English captain wanted his side to play without any apprehension regardless of the result. Morgan preferred IPL over England’s county cricket as it provided more exposure to his preferred brand of cricket. And although the British media criticized Morgan for the same, he went ahead with the process anyway.
The result was phenomenal and after repeatedly coming close to cross the threshold of 400 total runs in ODIs against New Zealand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Indies and others, England would finally tally 408 against New Zealand in 2015.
Since 2015, England have tallied over 400 runs five times in ODIs with the most recent one being a whopping total of 498 runs against the Netherlands. although the most popular was scoring 481 against a strong Australian side.
Captain Morgan had tallied 967, 328, 781 and 756, in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively, leading up to the 2019 World Cup. Hosting the cricketing extravaganza, England would come to the World Cup at a back of a 4-1 series win Down Under and 5-0 whitewash of Australia in their backyard, thus making them the favourites.
England would eventually win the 2019 World Cup by beating New Zealand in a nail-biter of a final, which remains a testament to Morgan’s captaincy. He would retire in 2022, the same year when England went on to lift the T20 World Cup as well. While most players changed, it was the approached instilled by Morgan that still lives on in England’s limited-overs team.
