London: England’s World Cup-winning former skipper, Eoin Morgan denied media reports of taking over from under-fire Matthew Mott as the team’s coach for limited-overs cricket, but also said that he has the desire to coach in the future.
After securing the ICC T20 World Cup in 2022 in Australia along with the newly-appointed captain Jos Buttler, Mott’s partnership with the Three Lions’ white-ball superstar sank to a low as they failed to defend their 50-over World Cup crown in 2023 in India and the T20 World Cup title in the West Indies and the USA this year.
In the 2023 World Cup, England lost six out of their nine games, including matches to Afghanistan and their arch-rivals India and Australia and were on the verge of missing out on direct qualification to the ICC Champions Trophy 2025. Though England reached the semifinals of the T20 World Cup, where they lost by 68 runs to India, they had to rely on Australia to beat Scotland in order to advance to the Super Eight.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Morgan said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo, “This news (reports of him taking over from Mott) is actually news to me. It is not nice when a coach comes under fire and there is a lot of speculation about his future. Only time will tell about what will happen.”
Morgan said that he has been asked if he would take up the coaching role for England, but the timing is not right for him at the moment as he has a young family.
“I have been asked a lot over the last couple of months about the role and whether I would take it on. My answer has simply been, the timing for everything in my life at the moment is not right,” he said.
“Yes, I want to coach down the line, but I have got a young family and I spend a lot more time at home. I am loving what I am doing, watching cricket through this,” he concluded.
Morgan is considered as perhaps the greatest leader England had. In 356 matches for England, he scored 10,115 runs at an average of 35.61, with 15 centuries and 59 fifties. His best score was 148. After England’s humiliating group stage exit in the 2015 ODI World Cup, it was captain Morgan who rebuilt the English side with more aggressive talent like Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Alex Hales and Buttler, making up a power-packed, aggressive batting line-up that could play its flashy, attacking and high-risk game irrespective of conditions.
England’s next white-ball assignment will be a three T20I and five ODI series against Australia in September.
