Morgan Upbeat Despite Going Behind In Series

Eoin Morgan1

Despite England scoring over 300 for the third Royal London One-Day International on the trot, Eoin Morgan finds his side 2-1 down heading into the fourth match at Trent Bridge.

Centuries from Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor guided the Black Caps to a three-wicket win in the third ODI at The Ageas Bowl, chasing down England’s 302 with seven balls to spare.

However, captain Morgan is remaining upbeat after another positive batting performance and has backed his team to respond in Nottingham.

“I think 300 was a pretty good score, it probably wasn’t a match-winning score but I’m proud of the guys and the way they came out and played again in a positive mindset,” he said.

“I think for a while now we’ve always played within ourselves and always batted up before the end but for a long time we were looking like getting 350 plus and that’s exciting to see, particularly when we’re trying to change our mentality with the bat.

“300 was certainly well within the game but I think what cost us was Kane and Ross’ partnership. They played really well today and all credit to them. We’ve got a young bowling line-up and we failed to come up with something to break them up.”

Trent Bridge marks a make or break situation for England with only a victory enough to take the series in to a fifth match.

And Morgan knows his team are only on the first step of their exciting new brand of cricket, with much improvement still to come.

“We’ve taken the overs out of the equation. Bottom line we got 300 on the board – we were aiming for a lot more, which is the important part,” he said.

“As long as we set the standards really high we’ll win more games than lose playing in this manner.

“It’s something we’re honing in on and it’s something we can only get better on. We’ve got a lot of talent in the field and like anything, we set the bar high and our skill level is just a bit down at the moment.”