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ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP

March 1, 2015

Eoin Morgan

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

Q. 300 is the total you've been saying you wanted. You got it quite comfortably and didn't defend it. That must have been terribly disappointing. Do you think you were below par at the end?
EOIN MORGAN: No, absolutely not. Going in at the halfway I think we got 310, probably 25 for both par, and again, stats back that up, par is 275, 280. Again, if you can build pressure at any stage, it can be perceived as more pressure because the outfielders and how slow it is. Yeah, we were happy going into the halfway stage, absolutely. Root had put in a great performance. Showed us class again, which is great. But when we bowl one bad bowl, every couple of overs or every over you're going to be punished.

Q. So it was a bowling performance that was not quite up to speed today?
EOIN MORGAN: Yeah, we created a couple of chances which went down, which is always disappointing because it hasn't been happening in training. So, yeah, that was disappointing.

Q. With the bowling though, is it a question of just the guys making mistakes or is it that the tactic you bring to this game is just a bit too predictable? I mean, Thirimanne has come in and he's a young man very full of himself. But his inference was the bowling was quite easy for him because he could predict what was going to happen?
EOIN MORGAN: We bowled a lot of bad bowls. Over the next couple of days we'll get the whole course back and the proof will be in that, but my feeling is we bowled a lot of bad bowls. Have we been too predictable? You look at the best sides, the best bowlers, and they're predicted to be good. When we're firing, we are predictably good. We have two tall guys that are very effective. Get bounce, get pace, and the guys swing the ball, and Moeen does his job. That's the balance of our attack. Rooty gets a bit of a bowl here and there. But when we bowl well, we put sides on the pressure and create opportunities, today we didn't.

Q. In terms of the bowl on the short side, was that a plan or just the way it came out?
EOIN MORGAN: Thirimanne didn't look too comfortable, particularly early on. Again, we dropped him at slip, but again chances like that go down all the time, and that was probably because he was hanging back. The balls that we bowled previously, it wasn't to do with any massive sideways movement. So, again, that worked to start with. Again, bowling shorter as the pace comes off, as the wicket gets slower, it becomes a wicket taking bowlers off.

Q. You said you bowled too many bad balls. Do you have a theory why that is today?
EOIN MORGAN: No, I don't have a theory yet, no.

Q. The three teams that you've played who are ranked higher than you, you've lost to two fairly comfortably so far. I bet that is a concern moving forward?
EOIN MORGAN: Losing any game is always a concern. Over the next few days we'll have them off, and we'll reconvene, and me and Mosie will have a sit down with the backroom staff and debrief the game and see where we've gone wrong and how we can get better.

Q. If you get to the quarterfinals going into that, you would want to be on those sorts of sides, wouldn't you?
EOIN MORGAN: Yeah, again today, we can talk about the chances that we put down. Thirimanne was one of them, Sangakkara was a wicket earlier, and more chances of getting after them. But, yeah, he played well. He came in with an ideal situation.

Q. Is that a gap you think you can breach before any quarterfinal?
EOIN MORGAN: Taking our chances? Absolutely, yeah.

Q. You now are one loss away from nearly being dumped out of the World Cup. How scary a thought is that with two games to go in the pool play?
EOIN MORGAN: It's not even a thought at the moment. Two games to win to get us into a quarterfinal.

Q. The way that you played against Australia and New Zealand in that respect, you also said we haven't really competed and can't really say what we're capable of because of the nature of those affairs. When you kind of land a punch like you do today and still get beaten comfortably in the end, is that harder to take?
EOIN MORGAN: Yeah, it definitely is harder to take. When you don't turn up for a race like those first two games, again, it's scratch. But today when we turn up and we're beaten in the fashion that we were, it's harder to take, yeah.

Q. In the long-term, what does English cricket need to do to compete in ODIs around the world over the next five years?
EOIN MORGAN: I think like any side they need to adapt well and consistently reproduce what works in the conditions that they're playing in.

Q. On a broader scale, how do they do that? What should English cricket be doing? We know there is a review going on, you're the England captain. What would you like to see happen?
EOIN MORGAN: Those exact same things that I just said. If we can reproduce, like today, for instance, we got a really good score. It probably wasn't a match-winning score got the side out of the game, but if we're to improve going forward, again, we probably would have taken wickets early, taken our chances, but very simple things. It's not out of our reach or a million miles away. It's just continuing to reproduce the simple things consistently.

Q. Is your gut feeling right now that you think you're going to have to make changes for that next game against Bangladesh?
EOIN MORGAN: At the moment I haven't really thought about it. We'll have a couple of days in Adelaide where we'll do nothing and then wait until the dust settles a bit, review the game with the back room staff and see how we go forward from here.

Q. I'm asking this as a local. What are your thoughts on the performance last night or both sides, actually?
EOIN MORGAN: I thought it was a really good game to watch. Knowing Brendon McCullum quite well, he'd probably be disappointed in the fashion that they've won. But, again, two frontrunners or two pace setters in a World Cup, it's great to come out of a game like that with a win. I'm sure he'd be really happy.

Q. With that in mind, it's harder to take. How will you lift the players to obviously win what now are absolutely must-win games?
EOIN MORGAN: Again, it's simple things moving forward. I keep banging on about them because we haven't done them so far in this World Cup stint. The simpler we keep it moving forward, the more obvious what we do or have to do over the next ten days. So it will be a message from me to the players. It's not a big deal getting to World Cup, everybody is like a kid at Christmas. Wants to play, wants to win, so that part of it is easy.
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