Summary Eoin Morgan said Wednesday he was aiming to end a run of poor form.
WELLINGTON (AFP) - England captain Eoin Morgan said Wednesday he was aiming to end a run of poor form with a match-winning performance when his side face New Zealand in their next World Cup game.
The 28-year-old left hander is battling to overcome a wretched run of form after getting out for 0, 2, 0, 0, 0 in his last five innings -- a desperate sequence for a top-order batsman.
Now England will hope Morgan fires in their second Pool A game against the Black Caps in Wellington on Friday, after he failed to score in the 111-run defeat by Australia, the other tournament co-hosts, in Melbourne.
Morgan, asked for the reason behind his recent meagre return, told reporters on Wednesday: "I d love you to explain it to me because I don t understand it.
"Personally I try and keep it as simple as possible. You don t look any further than what is in front of you and I ve done that and it hasn t worked.
"But I believe it will work and when it does, hopefully, I can cash in on it and hopefully make it either a match-winning performance or build on somebody else s performance."
Former Ireland international Morgan attributed his personal slump to a combination of bad luck and bad form.
"A bit of both," he said. "I ve certainly done the same things that I ve been doing since the start of the tour and I started the tour with a hundred.
"That s only five games ago. It s not that long ago," added Morgan of his 121 against Australia at Sydney in the tri-series which preceded the World Cup.
"I ve had a few low scores. Reflecting on my dismissal the other day I was unlucky. Looking forward to Friday, I ve worked as hard as I ve been working, and I ll continue to keep things simple."
Morgan insisted the absence of both Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott, once two of the mainstays of England s line-up in both Test and one-day cricket, wasn t creating extra pressure.
"Not particularly. Trott and Kevin haven t played for, maybe, two years and we ve had a lot of success since then. We ve got guys who have scored a bulk of runs in the past."
Morgan said hard training would help him overcome a lack of runs, just as it had in the past.
"I think the fact that I ve been through bad patches before has helped," he said
"Re-engaging with that belief you need to have and determination in your training probably gives me more confidence than if it was the first time going through a bad run," the Middlesex batsman added.
Morgan was parachuted into the England one-day captaincy on a full-time basis when Test skipper Alastair Cook was axed from the World Cup squad following a run of low scores in white-ball cricket.
But Morgan was adamant captaincy wasn t having a negative impact on his batting.
"Having done the captaincy in spurts before has helped my position at the moment," he said. "It has allowed me to continue what I m doing and balance both sides of it."
