Morgan keen to maintain consistency

England captain Eoin Morgan thinks his side’s biggest challenge will be maintaining their consistency ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 next summer.

Morgan’s ODI side have won 14 of their 19 fixtures in 2018 and find themselves at the top of the MRF Tyres Men’s ODI Team Rankings.

England extended this lead by two points following a 2-1 series win against India – who sit second in the rankings – when they came back from defeat in the first ODI to claim a seventh straight home series victory.

While England have shown their class playing against sides in recent bi-lateral series, Morgan highlighted the task of playing nine different teams in the round robin stage of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.

“One of the disadvantages is you play a different team every time and that’s hard to replicate,” said Morgan after the final ODI against India.

“The challenge will be trying to show the consistency that we’ve had and continue that hunger to improve. We have a lot of white-ball cricket leading into the World Cup.”

England’s struggles against spin - in particular left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav – was one of the reasons behind their T20I series loss to India and defeat in the opening ODI.

When asked about these challenges, Morgan said: “Be better at dealing with them from the start as opposed to making big mistakes and, then, improving on them as we go along.

“The World Cup is 10 games. I presume by the time the last group stage game is played it will be the best four teams topping the group."

The CWC19 Public Ballot opens on 1 August 2018. You can pre-registerHERE.