Publications
Partners
Wellington - England captain Eoin Morgan said on Wednesday he was aiming to end a run of poor form with a match-winning performance when his side face New Zealand in their next World Cup game.
The 28-year-old left hander is battling to overcome a wretched run of form after getting out for 0, 2, 0, 0, 0 in his last five innings -- a desperate sequence for a top-order batsman.
Now England will hope Morgan fires in their second Pool A game against the Black Caps in Wellington on Friday, after he failed to score in the 111-run defeat by Australia, the other tournament co-hosts, in Melbourne.
Morgan, asked for the reason behind his recent meagre return, told reporters on Wednesday: "I'd love you to explain it to me because I don't understand it.
"Personally I try and keep it as simple as possible. You don't look any further than what is in front of you and I've done that and it hasn't worked.
"But I believe it will work and when it does, hopefully, I can cash in on it and hopefully make it either a match-winning performance or build on somebody else's performance."
Former Ireland international Morgan attributed his personal slump to a combination of bad luck and bad form.
"A bit of both," he said. "I've certainly done the same things that I've been doing since the start of the tour and I started the tour with a hundred.
"That's only five games ago. It's not that long ago," added Morgan of his 121 against Australia at Sydney in the tri-series which preceded the World Cup.
"I've had a few low scores. Reflecting on my dismissal the other day I was unlucky. Looking forward to Friday, I've worked as hard as I've been working, and I'll continue to keep things simple."
Morgan insisted the absence of both Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott, once two of the mainstays of England's line-up in both Test and one-day cricket, wasn't creating extra pressure.
"Not particularly. Trott and Kevin haven't played for, maybe, two years and we've had a lot of success since then. We've got guys who have scored a bulk of runs in the past."
Morgan said hard training would help him overcome a lack of runs, just as it had in the past.
"I think the fact that I've been through bad patches before has helped," he said
"Re-engaging with that belief you need to have and determination in your training probably gives me more confidence than if it was the first time going through a bad run," the Middlesex batsman added.
Morgan was parachuted into the England one-day captaincy on a full-time basis when Test skipper Alastair Cook was axed from the World Cup squad following a run of low scores in white-ball cricket.
But Morgan was adamant captaincy wasn't having a negative impact on his batting.
"Having done the captaincy in spurts before has helped my position at the moment," he said. "It has allowed me to continue what I'm doing and balance both sides of it."
