The limited-overs English skipper, Eoin Morgan decided to rest himself during the dead-rubber fifth ODI against Sri Lanka on Tuesday in Colombo, which the visitors lost by a humongous margin of 219 runs (D/L method). He rated his side’s performance “extremely poor” as they had sealed the series 3-0 before the final game as the first ODI was washed out by the rain.

Morgan, however, said that the experience will be beneficial for preparations leading up to the 2019 World Cup. He said, “It can be extremely helpful. For 50 overs today, we were under serious pressure and we didn’t have a lot of answers. That gives us a good opportunity to go back and look at everything from preparation right down to the end result. That’s always better when you’ve been put under a lot of pressure.”

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He further elaborated, “We didn’t take our game forward today. Our fielding was extremely poor, our attitude was very poor and that has to be addressed. We’ll have to break down everything from yesterday’s practice. We might have been a little bit fatigued. I don’t know. We will break it down and find an answer because otherwise, we’re just papering over the cracks which is not what we want to do.”

An inexperienced England pace attack consisting Curran brothers (Sam and Tom) were smashed all over the park with the duo giving 117 runs in 14 overs. Morgan defended their performance and dropped a hint that Sam could be included in the World Cup squad as injury cover.

Talking about them, Eoin said, “Sam has only played his second ODI today. If we’re going to be serious about considering him as a potential replacement if David Willey is injured for the World Cup squad, we need to know more about him. Today, we learned more about him. If Sam Curran’s name goes down on that paper we know what his strengths and weaknesses are now, and we try to improve them as we go along. He needs games under his belt.”