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Morgan fears missing matches with leg injury


By AFP
Published : 17 Jun 2022 09:19 PM

England white-ball captain Eoin Morgan has revealed he could miss international matches this season as he tries to manage a right leg injury in a bid to be fit for the Twenty20 World Cup later this year.

Morgan suffered a quadriceps problem in the West Indies in January and the 35-year-old has twice damaged his groin during recent outings for county side Middlesex.

That placed a question mark over the batsman's fitness for the upcoming three one-day internationals away to the Netherlands in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam, in doubt.

Morgan, speaking on the eve of Friday's series opener, expects to feature throughout this campaign.

But he said there may be occasions when he doesn't take part in successive days of international action, with England scheduled to play T20s against India on July 9 and 10 and South Africa on July 27 and 28.

"Some of our international games are back-to-back, (I got injured) in the West Indies where I played Saturday and Sunday...so it's unlikely I will be (playing every England white-ball game this season)," he said. Morgan's injury problems and a run of low scores -- he is averaging 16 in his last 18 T20 innings -- have led to speculation about when England's 2019 50-over World Cup winning captain will stand down as skipper.

He admitted he was uncertain about whether he would still be in charge for England's defence of their World Cup title in India next year, saying he wasn't looking much beyond the October-November T20 World Cup in Australia.

"I need to get to the T20 one first," said Morgan. "I'm going to take it as it comes, managing my contribution, my body (and) am I still contributing on and off the field, within the team?

"I genuinely have the best interests of the team at heart."

This series also marks a debut campaign for England's new white-ball coach, Matthew Mott.

The former coach of Australia's all-conquering women's team, Mott will be aiming to match the start made by England's new Test coach Brendon McCullum, whose first two games in charge have yielded victories and a series win over his native New Zealand.

England are without Test players such as star all-rounder Ben Stokes and batsman Jonny Bairstow.

But they will still be strong favourites to beat a Dutch side that includes Essex's Shane Snater and Kent's Fred Klaassen

Morgan, who was a member of England teams beaten by the Netherlands in T20 internationals in 2009 and 2014, added: "They (the Dutch) are extremely competitive.

"In the first one at Lord's in mine and Adil Rashid's T20 debuts, we didn't deserve to win that game. We didn't play well enough and we weren't calm under pressure."