EOIN MORGAN joined Middlesex as a wide-eyed teenager from Dublin in June 2003, the same month the ECB launched a professional T20 competition for the first time.
In micro and macro terms respectively, both have changed the English game irrevocably across the 20 summers since. But as Morgan, who is 36 this summer, embarks on another T20 campaign with Middlesex tomorrow, it is worth wondering if this will be his last.
With only a white-ball deal at Middlesex, a quad injury and having gone unsold in the IPL auction, Morgan has gone four months without a game. He calls this "reality time" with his young family.
After his time out, he is speaking with genuine enthusiasm for the game. There is an excitement about England's new era, for the Test team under his great friend Brendon McCullum, and in white-ball cricket with Matthew Mott, who he has admired "from afar" for many years and "cannot wait" to work with.
And although it is some time since Morgan, for all his white-ball evangelism, has been much of a fan of the Blast (which he finds unwieldier than many of the tournaments he has called home, not least the Hundred), there is excitement for that, too. His expectations for Middlesex are tempered, but he hopes the confidence built topping Division Two of the County Championship will prove contagious.
"You don't have to be a genius to see we've struggled with our T20 cricket for some time now," he tells Standard Sport. "The focus has generally been on four-day cricket.
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