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England’s white-ball coach, Matthew Mott, has refuted
claims made by former World Cup winning captain Eoin Morgan that the team’s
dismal performance at this year’s tournament is due to a “unsettled”
dressing room.
After India defeated England by 100 runs in Lucknow,
leaving England at the top of the ten-team table following five convincing
losses in six games, Mott insisted that the team was still “incredibly
tight-knit” and that their training sessions were still “full of
fun” in spite of their dismal tournament prospects.
“There’s every opportunity when you’re losing to
splinter and go other ways,” Mott said. “[But] people are putting
their arms around each other trying to help them. It’s easy to do that when
you’re winning, but a lot harder when you’re losing and I’m proud we just keep
trying to get up.”
Nonetheless, Morgan continues to be a trusted advisor
to numerous players, eight of whom were part of the team that won the World Cup
in 2019. He had implied that “something else [is] going on… there has to
be” in an interview with Sky Sports prior to the India game, saying that
the team’s underwhelming performance in comparison to their pre-tournament
expectations was unheard of in any other sport.
After this most recent setback, Morgan went even
further, declaring that the atmosphere in the dressing room would be as
depressing as anything he had ever encountered during his own England career.
His lowest point, he said, was in Adelaide during the 2015 World Cup, when
their loss to Bangladesh in the group stage confirmed their early elimination
from the competition.
Mott, however, was unmoved by the suggestion of
disquiet in the camp.
“Eoin’s entitled to his opinion and he’s
obviously been away for a couple of weeks with the birth of his child,” he
said. “He hasn’t been in and around the rooms. I’ll certainly take that up
with him and have a chat to him. We’ve got a really good relationship with him
so if he’s seeing something I’m not, I’ll definitely have that
conversation.”