Our biggest worry was the pitch, says Morgan

England skipper Eoin Morgan refused to admit that Mitchell Johnson had got a wood on them after the paceman cleaned up three of the English top-order batsmen in the space of 10 balls to play a crucial role in Australia’s tri-series triumph here on Sunday.

“Absolutely not, I don’t think he swung it,” said Morgan when asked if Johnson opened up old wounds. “I think that the guys up front bowled well, swung it a little bit. But again, we must have put ourselves under pressure… I don’t know why we performed like this today. We will reassess over the next few days and come back stronger hopefully. But again, it’s not all doom and gloom. In order to get to this final, we have played some really good cricket,” he remarked after England crashed to 112-run defeat chasing Australia’s 278/8.

Morgan stressed Johnson wasn’t on top of their discussion. “I think our biggest worry was probably the pitch,” he began. “We didn’t know what the pitch was going to be like but it turned out to be better than we thought. But certainly he didn’t take the front in our meeting. We chatted about the opposition very briefly as we’ve played against them so much in the past. Individually, we come up with plans about how we are going to negotiate it but I don’t think we were threatened that much today. I think we were poor. I think it could probably have been anybody bowling. We had a really bad day. That’s the best way to describe it,” he remarked.

Glenn Maxwell, who was the man of the match for his returns of 95 and 4/46, disagreed with Morgan’s view on Johnson. “Yeah, but Mitchell did it, so he should be (worried),” said Maxwell when asked if Morgan’s view was unusual. “He had 3/11 at one stage and tore through their top order, so they can be not worried at all but if they are getting skittled by him, they probably should be.”

Maxwell was delighted with both the facets of his game – batting and bowling – coming along well. “I think both sides of my game were pretty good today, finally,” he noted. “The bat’s let me down a fair bit. I thought I have been bowling pretty well in the last 12 months. It was nice to put in a good all-round performance.”