Morgan 'Boast' Brings Sir Alf To Mind

Peter Hayter acknowledges the start of the World Cup mind games and compares Eoin Morgan’s attempts at playing the hype to that of an England legend

On the face of it, the Cricinfo website’s invitation to Eoin Morgan to pick his all-time World Cup XI was merely the latest bit of pre-tournament hype-mongering.

Certainly the initial response to the selection, delivered by the Irishman with the usual insouciant inscrutability that makes Yoda look like Kris Akabusi, was that Morgan was intent on treating it as a bit of fun.

“You see,” he explained, “I’d pick half of my team in this.”

And so he did, rather more than half, in fact. In the end he picked all but two of them.

“I’d go Adam Gilchrist and Jason Roy. I’d have Jonny Bairstow at three, Joe Root at four, Brian Lara at five, and Jos Buttler at six. I’d have to have (Ben) Stokes, in there, (Adil) Rashid, (Moeen) Ali, then, out of three seamers, I’d have to pick two, so I’d go with… (Liam) Plunkett and (Chris) Woakes as the other seamer.”

So let’s get this straight. Of all the thousands who have played one-day cricket since the dawn of time, in Morgan’s opinion, members of the current England team should fill nine of the 11 places in his all-time World Cup side.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, he can find no room for the likes of Vivian Richards, Joel Garner, Ian Botham, Imran Khan, Jacques Kallis, Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Wasim Akram, Matthew Hayden, Virat Kohli, and Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, AB De Villiers… fill in your personal favourites here.