Even though the current England captain, Jos Buttler, may not pay much heed to the “defending” champions tag, former skipper Eoin Morgan believes it would be a bigger achievement for England to win the World Cup 2023 in India than their title triumph four years ago at home.
England enter the World Cup 2023 as one of the contenders. However, they have faced challenges such as injury to Jofra Archer, and a lack of playing ODI cricket for the entire group in recent time, plus the late change to the squad by the inclusion of inexperienced Harry Brook replacing the veteran Jason Roy.
Eoin Morgan, who led England to their maiden ODI World Cup trophy four years ago, reckons it would be a tougher ask for Buttler’s team to win the tournament this year in India than it was at home in 2019.
“Quietly behind the scenes Buttler and head coach Matthew Mott have been planning for this World Cup but, if you asked them, they would probably say it has been unbelievably challenging. The side has chopped and changed quite a lot while there were question marks over the squad with the late omission of Jason Roy and inclusion of Harry Brook,” Eoin Morgan said on Sky Sports.
“All things considered, it would without a doubt be a bigger achievement for England to win this World Cup than when we won in 2019. The nature of the schedule has not allowed them to have the type of preparation they would like and being away from home, especially in India where India are so strong, is tough.”
“Winning here would carry a lot more weight than winning at home. I am still extremely hopeful that England can defend the title, though.”
Eoin Morgan pays “biggest compliment” to Jos Buttler
The former England skipper further emphasized some of the bad fortunes of Jos Buttler, pointing out that he hadn’t had the best players all the time. Buttler led England to the T20 World Cup 2022 title win in Australia; the ODIs had been on the backseat for the last three years and became more focused on this year only.
“The challenges for me going into 2019 were completely different to what Jos has gone through coming into this tournament.”
“Between 2015 and 2019, our sole focus was trying to win the ODI World Cup at home. There was a clear emphasis on having your best players available in the year leading up and trying to get absolute role clarity in every position possible. Jos has not had that.”
“The biggest compliment I can pay the captain is that he does things his own way. He is not trying to replicate what I would do,” Morgan added.
England will kick-start their title defence on Thursday against New Zealand in Ahmedabad.
