MASTER BLASTER
How Morgan went from wristy flicks and sweeps to power-hitter supreme
Brendon McCulluM’s eyes lit up when asked yesterday if he was surprised his close friend eoin Morgan had gone where no power-hitter had gone before, even in these giddy days of breathless 50-over cricket, and smashed 17 sixes in a single innings.
‘Yes, I was surprised,’ said the former new Zealand captain. ‘But only because I had spoken to him a couple of days before the match and he seemed to be in so much pain with his back that I wasn’t sure he’d be able to play at all.
‘What a display of hitting it was. He didn’t do it against just anyone but one of the best spinners in the world in rashid Khan. And he didn’t do it on one of the smaller grounds but one with longer boundaries in old Trafford. It was remarkable.’
The words were those of a master admiring the work of his pupil because McCullum provided the example for Morgan to follow when he was a pioneer of the modern 50-over approach during the last World Cup.
Morgan watched one of his best friends in the game at painfully close quarters when McCullum’s new Zealand annihilated his side in Wellington during that sorry tournament in 2015 and talked to him about how england could possibly follow suit.
Yet, neither imagined it would be Morgan himself rather than one of the many batsmen who have flourished under his enlightened leadership to break a record shared by big-hitting masters Chris Gayle, rohit sharma and AB de Villiers.
The fact is, as nasser Hussain pointed out in these pages yesterday, Morgan has been in highly productive form for some time now but it has almost gone under the radar because of how spectacularly well so many of his charges have batted.
He has, indeed, now hit 122 sixes in the four-year cycle since the last World Cup, more than anyone bar India’s giant rohit, who has 136. no other batsman worldwide has exceeded 100. so, the original ‘freak’ of england’s limited-overs cricket has evolved from the wristy purveyor of his hurling-like sweeps and flicks into a 32-year-old hitter capable of eclipsing even the likes of Jos Buttler, Jason roy, Jonny Bairstow et al.
This calendar year, even before Tuesday’s assault on Afghanistan, Morgan had been hitting on average a six every 20 balls in one-day internationals as opposed to one every 30 or even 40 in previous years. now he is clearing the ropes once every 13 balls. The admiration yesterday came from inside, as well as outside, the england camp.
‘When we assessed things after about 10 or 12 overs we felt 280-300 would be a par score,’ said Joe root of Tuesday’s World Cup match, very much the junior partner in a stand of 189 runs where Morgan smashed 143 of them.
‘so to finish the way we did (198 off the last 15 overs) was incredible. I’m trying to find the right word for Morgs’ innings. It was just phenomenal really, but we definitely knew he had something like that in him.
‘He plays like that a lot, selflessly. sometimes he even goes a bit too hard because he wants to set an example and show how he wants us to play. To see him leading from the front towards the business end of what we are trying to achieve is fantastic for us.’
It was, extraordinarily, not long ago that Morgan’s place was being questioned and he said he would drop himself if he felt it was in the best interests of the team.
At the time former assistant coach Paul Farbrace felt compelled to respond that Morgan could make a duck in each of his innings right up until the World Cup and would still be the best man for the job; as he is proving now with his batting, as well as his captaincy.
Then there was that time three years ago when the captain would not lead his team in Bangladesh because of security concerns and former captains-turned-pundits of the calibre of Hussain, Mike Atherton and Michael Vaughan all said he was wrong to do so.
But even then Morgan’s players queued up to back his stance and how right they were to want him to remain at the helm. For a captain who has not always appeared in love with the game, a man who seems just as happy on the golf course or watching horse racing as he does playing cricket, is now proving to be one of the most influential leaders in the history of the english game.
And he is doing it, gloriously, by setting the perfect, stunning example.