Morgan praises opening bowlers after Sri Lanka win

England’s ODI captain, Eoin Morgan, was full of praise for Stone and Woakes after his team’s 31-run victory over Sri Lanka in the second ODI in Dambulla. Woakes finished with 3/26 and Stone with 1/23 as the two seamers ripped apart the Sri Lankan top-order in the opening PowerPlay.

“I think the two Warwickshire boys really set the tone from the start – Chris Woakes is a very experienced campaigner and one of our MVPs in the last few years. He is an awesome guy to have in a team and we are very lucky to have him. Olly [Stone] coming in on debut showed exactly what he has shown so far on the tour. He bowled with an extra yard of pace and a great attitude. Obviously it’s a great start to the series for him and hopefully we can build on this today.”

While England emerged victorious today, he feels his team have more to give in this series.

“I would like to think we have a few more gears than we showed today. It is obviously early on in the series. We will take a win, we got enough to get a win today, but ultimately, we won’t be that satisfied with the performance.

“It was not a bad start to the series. We have had a bit of an awkward start with training and then the first game with the rain that we have had. I wouldn’t say it has been our best game. I thought batting in the first innings we managed to scrape something together. We probably should have gone past par score. We ended up just scraping towards that, but in essence, I don’t think it is a bad run out for us.”

Morgan finished as Player of the Match thanks to his 92 (91) that anchored England’s innings, but he said it took him a while to get himself set.

“I was extremely scratchy for the first 30 balls which isn’t a surprise, I am not a great starter. But having someone like Joe Root at the other end rotating the strike, building the partnership, is always a huge help. We really enjoy batting together and when we do get a partnership it is normally quite substantial. We would have liked for us to kick on towards 300 today and Sri Lanka came back into the game beautifully and we got just above a par score.

“Myself and Joe [Root], in particular, found a way to score on these particular wickets. I thought Lasith [Malinga] came back and bowled particularly well at the end which we found challenging which is a nice flag-up early in the series. He obviously still has a lot to offer as an experienced and very senior bowler, so we will need to work on that going forward.”