Parky’s tough learning curve vital

EOIN Morgan believes Matthew Parkinson will learn a lot from his ODI debut, despite England being hammered by South Africa at Newlands.

Having made his T20 bow for the Three Lions earlier in the winter, the Lancashire leg-spinner was named in the side for the first match of the series in Cape Town.

But it wasn’t a winning start for Parkinson, as England – playing their first game since winning the World Cup last summer – struggled to 131-6 before Joe Denly (87) and Chris Woakes (40) lifted England to 258-8 from their 50 overs.

That proved nowhere near enough following a second-wicket stand of 173 between new 50-over captain Quinton De Kock and Temba Bavuma, who made 107 and 98 respectively, as South Africa took a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.

Parkinson kept things tight, but was unable to take a wicket as he finished with 0-48 from his 8.4 overs.

Morgan, who admitted England were beaten by far the better team, believes it is just the start for the 23-year-old from

Bolton, who made his debut along with Somerset batsman Tom Banton.

“They learned a huge amount,” said the England captain. “Failure is a huge platform to try and catapult you forward and learn from your mistakes.

“It’s not all crash, bang, wallop. I think we need to continue to learn like we have done in the past .... we were outplayed because we were off the mark.

“South Africa completely outplayed us in all departments. We’ve got no excuses, we didn’t adapt to conditions. Every batsman apart from Joe Denly and Chris Woakes failed to get going.

“Full credit to them. We lacked the adaptation to the skill level that was needed. We lost wickets in clusters, up until that Woakes and Denly partnership.”