“The opportunity is huge and guys are really looking forward to it”
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England ODI captain Eoin Morgan has announced that his side are here to “win this World Cup”.
Despite having been thrashed by 112 runs in the ODI tri-series final against Australia just recently, Morgan still believes that his team have the talent to beat any side.
“We’re here to win the World Cup,” Morgan said. “That’s the bottom line. Like every other team, we’re here to get the best out of ourselves, and us at our best, we can win this World Cup.
“The talent within the squad is untold. It’s certainly the most talented squad I’ve ever been a part of, and to get the opportunity to lead these group of players in a World Cup is huge.
“Maybe once, twice in a career you have an opportunity to go and win a World Cup. The opportunity is huge and guys are really looking forward to it.
“If we front up and play as well as we can, absolutely we can beat Australia.”
The one area where Morgan feels England have to drastically improve upon is their death bowling since they concede too many runs during those last 10 overs.
“We’ve been happy with the majority of the times we’ve bowled,” Morgan said. “The first 40 overs have been fantastic in most games.
“An area of concern has been probably the last 10 overs, but that’s been an area of concern for a long time and is an area of concern for most teams.
“The more we can play with freedom the better. Trying to instil trust within everybody in the top seven is huge for us.
“It’s not alien to us to playing that way because the guys we’ve selected in the squad play that way naturally. But it certainly is different for us to play in these conditions and try and be as positive as we can as opposed to what we (are) used to.
“On a good batting surface a winning score is probably about 340 and par is about 300. It’s an area in which we’ve made strides. We’ve struggled to do this in the past, and I think with the batting line-up we have, it’s well within our capability to continue to play positively throughout 50 overs.
“As a fielding unit we’ve come together quite well and sort of grown in strides the more we’ve been together.”