Morgan should stay as England captain – he will be hard to replace
TTheir Achilles heel, death bowling, cost them a crucial game. It is their only area of concern
he end of a tournament inevitably prompts questions about the future of an England captain, but Eoin Morgan should carry on if he feels he has the ambition and appetite to take the team to next year’s T20 World Cup.
But if he also feels it is time to go then that is fine, too. He has achieved so much with England that he should be left to make whatever decision he feels is right for him and the team. Eoin will know when it is time to move on, you just do as an England captain. It is not up to us to decide.
Personally, I think his leadership is imperative to the team, especially in T20 cricket. The more I watch T20 cricket, the more I realise the importance of leadership. If you have a captain who knows how to manoeuvre his troops, set the right fields and stay level-headed under huge pressure then you have a massive advantage as a team.
Morgan is superb in tight situations. He never loses his cool. He is impossible to read or rattle. It will be very hard for England to find another captain with his level-headedness.
His batting is a concern and he will want to get that back on track, but he is an outstanding captain. He and Kane Williamson are the best two in the world.
It should not be doom and gloom about England’s defeat. It happens in T20 cricket. England are a fantastic team, they will know this was a massive opportunity missed to win another World Cup.
But they were badly hit by the losses of Jason Roy and Tymal Mills during the tournament and Jofra Archer before it. They did not have Ben Stokes either.
In the end, their Achilles heel, death bowling, cost them a crucial knockout game. We cannot be too harsh, because Mills and Archer would have made a huge difference and were unavailable, but Morgan will know it is an area they have to improve. The next tournament is in Australia on good batting tracks that suit England but it will be irrelevant if they cannot bowl at the death. It is their only area of concern.
They were controlling the game and all of a sudden one over shifted momentum to New Zealand, and that is all it takes in T20.
New Zealand were the team I worried about the most because of how street smart they are. Over the past four years, they have been the best team across all formats.
They have a group of players who are always switched on. The partnership between Devon
Conway and Daryl Mitchell when they were two wickets down was so controlled. They just hung in, did not take many risks, because they knew they had the power further down the innings to go for sixes if needed.
Other teams would have panicked at two wickets down early on but New Zealand have this mental toughness of how to win difficult moments. It is not about winning those moments by being flamboyant or dancing down and launching Adil Rashid for six early. You win moments by playing smart cricket and staying in the moment. It is a great lesson to all sports teams: winning key moments is about being calm, controlled and focused.
They knew England’s one weakness was their death bowling. Over the week, New Zealand would have been talking about hanging in until England got to their death overs, because they knew they could then catch up. T20 is all about match-ups and is like a game of chess. It has become such a strategic game, it is fascinating to watch. It is like baseball in that every ball is an event. But it is also in danger of becoming predictable.
We know that strategies are based around getting the ball spinning away from the bat. It is how and what comes next that interests me.
It has been an OK tournament. It has not really fired the imagination in Britain. It has probably felt like a good tournament to those living and breathing it in the United Arab Emirates but India not competing affected it and it has not really caught on.
It is hard to remember too many standout moments. Perhaps it was a good time to be knocked out in a semi-final because there will be little scrutiny on England. It is also a format that is not forensically examined like Test cricket.