How Eoin Morgan ripped up the rule book and transformed English cricket forever

Morgan enjoyed a relaxed environment. His approach to training was to do what was necessary, no more. He banned whole team meetings, thinking they were hot-air exercises. He enjoyed horse racing and a night out but bought into the team curfew after the Stokes-Bristol incident.

Along with Root, the Test captain, he introduced the team mantra of ‘Courage, Unity and Respect’. It was revealed to the players in Sri Lanka in 2018 after a long process that involved Morgan consulting figures from football and rugby. He met with Manchester City’s psychologist, Peter Lindsay, who read the poem ‘This is the Place’ by Tony Walsh that celebrates Manchester’s past and a line of which is translated for the club’s new foreign recruits. It shows nationality does not matter in a multi-cultural team. Morgan wanted something similar.

Cricketers live itinerant lifestyles, hopping from tour to tour but Morgan realised one thing stays constant: the cap presented to a player on debut. The team would live by three simple rules. The cap is a metaphor for a career – guard it and treasure it. The crown emblem stands for taking the team forward and the three lions underneath were each given a meaning: one for courage, one for unity, one for respect.

It can sound like sentimental tosh to some but young players introduced to the squad, and hearing Morgan speak of these things, say they were inspired. It also set the rulebook as Alex Hales discovered: when he stepped over the line once too often, he was dropped and only recalled after Morgan’s retirement as captain.

“Sit next to him or on the field, and you never see him lose his rag,” Moeen said. “If he needs to be firm one on one he will do it in a nice, calm way. His demeanour was the best.”

Right to the end, Morgan never let it slip.

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6. Kevin Pietersen

Everything that Pietersen touched turned to gold at first, at home. He brought in a new spinner – his “little mate” from Nottinghamshire, as he called him, Samit Patel – and won his early games in the same heady atmosphere as the new Stokes-McCullum era. But things went into decline abroad, where man-management is more important. Leading by example, Pietersen could show his players where to go; taking them with him was another matter. Four years ago, during a warm-up match in New Zealand, Stokes spent an hour walking round the Hamilton ground with his struggling Durham team-mate Mark Stoneman, trying to pump up his tyres. 

5. Sir Andrew Strauss

It was the 50-over World Cup quarter-final of 2011 in Colombo. A part-time offspinner opened the bowling for Sri Lanka – and England were paralysed. Strauss himself, opening, could not sweep, let alone reverse-sweep or slog-sweep, and Sri Lanka were on top thereafter: England exited the tournament abysmally. Strauss, to his credit, made amends when he became director of England cricket and made sure, under Eoin Morgan, they never played the same way again, especially against spin. 

4. Michael Vaughan

In their first T20 international in 2005, England batted with a similar approach to Bazball, based on only two seasons of domestic T20, and took the same fearlessness into the Ashes, where they scored 401 at five an over at Edgbaston. But there was not the same subtlety: the bowling was all right-arm pace, no spinner nor left-arm quick. And in ODIs England could not break the conventional mould, because their captain did not have the confidence to define a new style. He batted best after he had bowled a spell, which was not often. 

3. Sir Alastair Cook

It was somewhat of an anomaly that England became number one in the world ODI rankings. As one of the team, Graeme Swann pointed out that it was because England were playing a lot of their games at home, scoring 250 off their 50 overs and defending it with conventional pace. The revolution – using two spinners, attacking with the bat from the start – did not begin until Cook had gone. Even so, England would have done better at the 2015 World Cup if he had stayed on, and opened instead of Ian Bell, instead of getting a knock on his door at Christmas shortly before the tournament.

2. Paul Collingwood 

Collingwood was a reluctant leader at first, who came good in the end by winning the T20 World Cup in 2010. He experimented; giving his seamers spells of one over on a green pitch in South Africa in a T20 international did not work, but bringing in a left-arm pace bowler in Ryan Sidebottom certainly did, and so did his employment of two spinners, if stretching a point to call Mike Yardy a spinner. Above all, he could set a dynamic example in the field, like Morgan, while his captaincy was maturing. 

1. Eoin Morgan (by a mile)

Progressed England’s white-ball cricket further than all his predecessors put together. His phlegmatism under fire for a start; his brilliant fielding at extra-cover; his record of never betraying disappointment with a fielder or bowler by a single word or gesture; and his ability to hit in the air was ahead of its time, too, although others came along who could hit 360 degrees, like Jos Buttler. It is a great leader who has a clear vision then implements it fully, as Morgan did.

A version of this article first appeared in June 2022