Morgan warns England must experiment
Hosts will use T20 series to find out best line-up ‘We need to be at our best to defeat India’
Perhaps a limited-overs contest in England finally beckons. After pummelling Australia 6-0 across the one-day international series and lone Twenty20 game, England now face a more onerous foe: India, essentially the Indian Premier League All-stars.
While England’s one-day team are imperious, the T20 side are still in the midst of development, as the two World Twenty20s of 2020 and 2021 hove into view. So the successful promotion of Jos Buttler to open is likely to be the harbinger of what is to come at Old Trafford today and beyond.
“You will see more experimentation,” said the England captain, Eoin Morgan. “I think we have to be open to what might be the best combination down the line. Don’t think here and now that making a solid decision and sticking with it for the next two years is productive or healthy.
“We can be as adaptable as we can going forward, with one eye on the Australia World Cup [in 2020]. We have also the Big Bash to go to – some of our guys might go down there and absolutely tear it up, so you have to be open-minded.”
While the end of the 2019 oneday World Cup, which is two months before Morgan turns 33, has been suggested as a natural end point to his England career, he intends to continue for longer. “As long as I’m still in the job I’d love to do it. It’s where all our plans are going, like 2019, 2020 for the T20s. Let’s hope I’m still there.”
India will surely not prove as amenable opponents as Australia. If high-quality wrist-spin, from Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav, is the most obvious point of difference between the two, India also have a team brimming with T20 brilliance, fresh from crushing Ireland in a two-game series.
“India are a tough team and we will have to be at our best to beat them but [we are] really looking forward to start and get back into things,” Morgan said. “If you focus on one or two of them – say focus on the spinners – it’s more than likely that the seamers will go and get the wickets.
“They’re a strong side, they do have other components to their game, they obviously have a very experienced domestic background as well,” he added. “It’s going to be a good challenge.”
To the England team it will also feel like a familiar one: 13 players – though not Morgan himself – appeared in the IPL this year. “Our experience of playing in the IPL is of benefit to us. It exposes our players to the biggest competition in the world,” said Morgan, who played in the IPL for six seasons.
“When I was coming through to the international team, playing against somebody like a Chris Gayle for instance, who you’d built up as quite a significant player in the game, you felt a million miles away from that. Whereas our guys are rubbing shoulders with the best, competing and doing quite well.”
The India captain, Virat Kohli, welcomed the record England contingent in this year’s tournament – the culmination of England’s gradual rapprochement with the IPL since Kevin Pietersen argued that players should be free to play in the whole tournament in 2012.
“I was really glad to see the rigid mindset was sort of kept on the side and people were allowed to come over. It did great things for them and it is going to do great things for global cricket as well,” Kohli said. “I think because England haven’t played so much IPL cricket, there was never that familiarity or that sort of warmth between the two teams as much as we have with the other teams. I think this season has broken that barrier to a great extent.”
Quite how warm England will still be feeling towards Kohli once three T20s, three ODIS and five Test matches have played out this summer is a very different matter.