Eoin Morgan by CricketArchive Staff Reporter

---

Player:

EJG Morgan

---

DateLine: 8th May 2009

 

Eoin Morgan has never hidden his desire to play a higher level of cricket than Ireland, his birth-country, can afford him. And in skipping through the age groups in Ireland, he was quickly identified as a future star, possibly more naturally gifted than Ed Joyce, his fellow Irishman who he joined at Middlesex in 2006. A compact left-hander with a full range of attractive strokes, he captained Ireland at the 2006 Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka in which he finished with an average of 67.60, and was a member of the teams that played in the 2003-04 tournament in Bangladesh. He was an NBC Denis Compton award winner in 2003 and 2004 and has enjoyed plenty of success in the Intercontinental Cup for Ireland, hitting 151 of 150 balls in the 2005 semi-final against UAE, then scoring 209 not out against the same opponents to put his side into the final in 2007. That knock followed his successful time in Kenya with Ireland at the World Cricket League where he averaged 52.20 including his first ODI century against Canada, a sublime 115 from 106 balls. He was disappointing in the 2007 World Cricket League and, in the World Cup - while showing fleeting glimpses of his class and potential - he finished with just 91 runs in his nine games. However, his development continued at county level; his inventive and audacious strokeplay in the middle-order for Middlesex helped them to the Twenty20 Cup in 2008, and he earned selection to the England Lions. In 2009 he was named in England's squad for the ICC World Twenty20, effectively ending his time with Ireland.