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ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP

March 9, 2015

Eoin Morgan

ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Q. I know it's very tough right now, but I wonder in your mind who or what is to blame for England going out of the World Cup at this stage?
EOIN MORGAN: I don't think there's any one thing. Ultimately it's come down to the way we've performed, and today was another example of us not performing or putting together a game of cricket. I thought at halftime we bowled pretty well. The wicket was a good wicket, and again, it was short one side. But three wickets in the space of I don't know how long it was, four overs or something, two wickets in one over, doesn't help the cause.

Q. Do you feel embarrassed about it as a side?
EOIN MORGAN: Extremely disappointed, because within the group there was a lot of belief and expectation, again, to go further than this. I think it's more surprise than anything else.

Q. The entire winter is set aside for one-day cricket, the Ashes Series was moved, and yet England seem to be further behind in one-day cricket than ever.
EOIN MORGAN: Yeah, can't complain about our preparation. It was good. It was more our performance. We couldn't get our performance right. We couldn't gel a batting and a bowling performance in one game. We've done it probably a handful of times over the last 120 months, and since we've touched down here we've tried to address that problem, and we felt we were making strides, but we didn't today.

Q. You've been heavily beaten by three teams. You've lost to a team you should have beaten today.
EOIN MORGAN: I can't put my finger on it at the moment. Again, performance is huge. You need guys scoring runs, weight of runs, you need guys threatening with the ball or building pressure. Again, you've watched all the games. We haven't done that consistently.

Q. After this defeat, still very disappointing, but do you think when you head back to the UK you'll have a serious thought about whether you're the man to take this team forward?
EOIN MORGAN: Oh, I certainly want to play one-day cricket. Still inspired to play Test cricket. The captaincy is something I've enjoyed. Working with Peter has been brilliant. I've learnt a lot from him and a lot about myself working with the team.

Q. Talk about your form.
EOIN MORGAN: My form hasn't been great since the end of our summer, and again, I thought I turned a corner when we touched down here. I put in a reasonably good performance, but since then I've struggled, and again, for a number of reasons, not just one. Yeah, again today I hit a ball and there was a couple of yards either side of him, and it was either four or six.

Q. Can you just tell us how you saw that Chris Jordan decision towards the end there?
EOIN MORGAN: I've been on the end, so -- last tour here, I think I had two decisions like that. We didn't have a screen in the dugout, so it couldn't be clear to us, but I'll certainly have a look at it again.

Q. You can talk about being unlucky or not performing, et cetera, but does there come a time when you perhaps think that the players are not quite good enough at this level?
EOIN MORGAN: I think the players are good enough, and again, I've been saying that throughout the tournament. Guys have put in individual performances, but they haven't been consistently good enough to make them a team performance. They've been sporadic. But again, I stress that since we've touched down we've tried to address that, and it hasn't come easy. It's probably not something that we'll do. But yeah, I certainly believe that we have the right calibre of players.

Q. And is it part of being good enough being able to perform as a team, to perform under pressure rather than just sporadically?
EOIN MORGAN: Yeah, I think it's both. Again, confidence from winning games of cricket, and again, performing under pressure comes from confidence. But the performances have been run-of-the-mill performances. They haven't been always under pressure. If we came into this game with a string of wins and then all of a sudden had a huge collapse, I'd say we need to address this problem, but it's underperforming. That's the problem.

Q. Could you just confirm that you do want to carry on as one-day captain, and if so, do you think you should go to the game in Ireland afterwards? It would be the first game of the new era as it were.
EOIN MORGAN: That's a long way to think ahead. I think the selectors have come out already and said that they're not going to take most of the senior players to the Ireland game. So yeah.

Q. Do you want to carry on as one-day captain?
EOIN MORGAN: Oh, certainly at the moment I haven't thought a great deal about it because obviously this comes as a big surprise. But yeah, certainly I've enjoyed the captaincy.

Q. Eoin, England have failed in World Cups for the last part of 25 years now. You've played T20 around the world, played with a lot of different players. What is it about the English system that's holding them back from succeeding in one-day cricket?
EOIN MORGAN: Again, I can't win point one thing that holds us back. There are progressions being made in the domestic game to sort of higher the standard and catch up, particularly in T20, which I think will help us in T20. It might have a knock-on effect on one-day cricket, as well.
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