Hello all, its been a while so hope you are all well.... Well what a disaster this entire winter has been for england, infact i think its easily the worst winter of international cricket i have ever seen as a england fan, traumatic at best.
As the heated arguments rage on over KP and his future or as it seems right now non future in the side a host of test places have suddenly become available for grabs, currently england are missing a opener, a number 4 and 5, a wicket keeper, a spinner and a quick.. The only players seemingly guaranteed test cricket come SL in summer are cook, bell, stokes, broad and anderson. It could be said that is been generous to them to, but i think you stick with your core and barring the emerging stokes you have some truly good test records in that group. So the question is who will fill those berths?
Now there is a range of good county talent that could make the step up so i doubt we will struggle for candidates, despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the England team we do have some good young players in our system and will (even if it takes time) bounce back from this winter. England will never forget this.
On that track though comes the news that Eoin morgan has made himself available to middlesex for the full season instead of going to the IPL.
Now some may commend that decision as after all with places available in the test side then eoin clearly wants to put his name forward for one of those spots and its easy to forget that morgan has already played test cricket for England and done ok for the national side, he was dropped if i remember rightly from the side after the UAE mauling by Pakistan, but not before scoring 2 hundreds and 3 50s for the test side in 16 tests with a average of 30. His average to is a sign of how well the top 5 was performing at the time with home series wins against india on the back of some heavy run scoring by the likes of bell, kp and a massive cook dig, often leaving him to put the finishing touch to innings or to be aggressive from ball 1 and series at home against some excellent quicks against Pakistan.
But in truth eoin failed and we moved on , however now places are free maybe he feels its his time again to be part of the team but in truth i do feel this is a big big mistake.
It seems odd to question somebody's attempts to better themselves, especially as somebody as talented as morgan who could well prove me wrong and score a lot of runs for england in the longer format however are england by trying to get eoin back in doing more damage then good?
The reason i say that is because of the undoubted talent the boy has in the shorter format, as a odi player he could become the best in the world, his game is there and he should finish his career comfortably englands highest scoring ODI player not to mention his ability is ideal for the t20 game where i think he should be batting at 3, building an innings rotating the strike and hopefully finishing it off at the end. Again he could easily be one of the best batsmen in the world in that format, whilst apart of me thinks he should be englands shorter format captain instead of having cook and broad.
Now people can and will say of course he can still do all of the above things and still play test cricket, which i think is a fair point but is eoin going to damage his rhythm in the shorter format by mixing it up and missing out on events such as the IPL, the big bash and even the english T20 tourny by having to much cricket going on at once, he may get away with at first but the demands of a england player who plays each format are massive, look at joe root. Here is a young Yorkshire lad who has been away from home for 5 months and had a shocking tour of Australia who will go to the Caribbean at the end of the month to play more cricket when quite honestly he looks mentally shot! Its a tough game playing all formats and more importantly a mentally tiring one.
My fear is that we lose our best shorter format batsmen by exposing him to a game that in my opinion he probably isnt good enough for and shouldnt concern himself with. Morgan has the ability to be the best one day player in the world and maybe the best captain to, i hope england dont ruin his career by trying to change something that doesn't need changing. Hopefully the new coach will sit down with him and lay out his one day path not his 5 day one.
What are your thoughts? Can morgan prosper at test level? Or will it damage him as ODI/T20 player to?
Comments please