‘We didn’t adapt’ – Eoin Morgan laments ‘terrible’ batting

The seven-wicket loss, during which Chris Gayle went berserk with a 27-ball 77, helped West Indies avoid a series defeat. It ended 2-2, and England, the No. 1-ranked side on the MRF Tyres ICC ODI Rankings, will be disappointed at being outplayed.

The West Indies quicks were all over England, with young Oshane Thomas returning 5/21 in just 5.1 overs. The England batsmen kept attempting to hit out, like they did in Grenada, and Morgan admitted that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

"We didn't adapt," said the England captain. "It was a terrible batting performance, which is a disappointing way to end the series. We need to learn from the experience.

"It (the conditions) was evident from the first two overs. You could see it from the changing room. We did have that conversation. But we didn't adapt. Trying to curb your natural ability, to try to go from high-risk to low-risk and still get a score in the morning that will be good enough in the afternoon, is difficult."

This isn’t unusual for England. Their collapse against Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 – from 128/2, England were bowled out for 211 – was similar, and it’s been a question that has been asked of England for a while now – Nasser Hussain, the former England captain, spoke of the team’s susceptibility to “moments of madness” after they collapsed to 263 in the second ODI.

“When we come up in conditions for the first time it has gone wrong," said Morgan. "When we've come back in conditions that are similar to where we've made mistakes, we've actually played really well. It's easy to gloss over things like that because when we play well some of our guys make things look quite easy.

"We learned from that Champions Trophy defeat. We went away from home and played on slow, low wickets and improved our game from that experience.

“This was a surface that we rarely come up against. It was just the bounce. And I don't think we dealt and adapted with that. We continued to play as if we were on the same pitch in Grenada. A low-risk shot there was high-risk today.”

Trevor Bayliss, the head coach, agreed with Morgan. "It was a poor performance," he said. "There were some woeful shots, and obviously after that, we were never in the game.

“We still haven't adapted. We didn't adapt at all. We found during the Test series that the bouncier wickets were our Achilles' heel, we don't often get to play on too many bouncy wickets in England, and it's certainly not a strength of ours.”