Pune: The challenge of beating India at their home soil in the three-match ODI series, beginning here on Sunday was huge but not insurmountable, said visiting team skipper Eoin Morgan today.
“The challenge of winning in India is huge, (but) it is one that’s not impossible, it has happened recently. South Africa turned India over, New Zealand pushed them close,” said the Irish-born Morgan at the prematch press conference.
He was referring to South Africa’s 3-2 ODI series win in 2015 and New Zealand’s 2-3 loss against India last year.
“One of the biggest challenges here is adapting to conditions,” Morgan added.
Morgan said the experience of having played in India 10 months ago in the World T20 Championships and entering the final was a confidence booster.
“I think the thing that we draw from it is the confidence in knowing that we have played in these conditions before,” said Morgan.
He did not want to read too much into the Test series defeat orchestrated by India’s spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja who are both in the ODI squad.
“It’s always going to be a challenge. It’s like coming to England and facing swing bowling. Playing anybody in their home conditions is a challenge and how you adapt to that and how you negotiate that I think can determine where a game is won or lost.
“I have no input in the red-ball stuff. I know they tried hard and gave it all they had,” he said.
Morgan said he wanted to describe his team as a unit which preferred to play in its own way rather than calling it fearless, as mentioned by Indian skipper Virat Kohli in his media conference.
“I would not say fearless, I would just like to think we like to play in our own way. The players that we have are very outgoing, very expansive and very explosive, and can stick to their natural game which is quite an aggressive game.
“Trying to be somebody else or trying to be a different team does not work for us. We try to be ourselves and be comfortable within our skins, and I think that has worked,” said the visiting skipper.
Kohli said his team had a battery of world-class bowlers to counter a “fearless” England batting attack in the three-match one-day series.
“I have seen the warm-up games as well, they seem to be quite fearless,” Kohli, 28, said at the prematch press conference.
“I think against a side like this you need to be more aggressive in terms of wanting to pick up wickets because if you think of bowling dot balls they feed on that.
“So we already have plans in place in terms of how to counter what they come up with ... we have quality bowlers on our side, we have bowlers who can make a dent initially.
“We have world-class spinners as well so it’s going to be interesting to see how hard they come at us initially ... The English team especially in the shorter format looks very fearless.”
The one-day series is Kohli’s first assignment as full-time skipper after Mahendra Singh Dhoni quit as the ODI and T20 captain earlier this month.
Kohli also said his side would use the England series to prepare for the Champions Trophy in June. “These three games we are necessarily taking them as knockout games in our own heads because we need to prepare for the Champions Trophy and we need to be in the right kind of mind frame because that tournament is like that, it is very competitive, it is very quick.
“These three games become all the more crucial because we don’t have much time before the big tournament.”
The second ODI will be played on January 19 in Cuttack with the last game on January 22 in Kolkata. The one-dayers will be followed by three Twenty20 matches.
