England's hopes of finally ending their World Cup drought in 2019 may have suffered a major jolt with their captain and key middle order batsman Eoin Morgan sustaining an injury. The skipper of arguably the strongest English team to compete in a World Cup has something described as "small flake fracture."
The authorities though, are very optimistic and have suggested that the Irish-turned-English cricketer will fully recover from the injury before the tournament begins. England play the opening match of the World Cup against South Africa on May 30 at The Oval in London.
The left-handed batsman sustained the injury while practicing slip catching during a team training session at the Ageas Bowl – the venue for the home team's first practice game against Australia, in the run-up to the World Cup.
Not only is Morgan a central figure in the new batting style that England have adopted since the 2015 World Cup, where they look to be aggressive throughout the innings and not let bowlers settle down, his captaincy has been cited as the major reason for the turnaround that England have experienced in their performances since the last edition of ICC's biggest ODI event four years ago. When some people complained about the three lions batting recklessly and not showing enough intelligence, Morgan defended the approach as a step to get his team in the mind-set for scoring at high run-rates.
Though the England ODI captain has been projected to fully recover from the injury to play in the opening match of the ICC event, he will be kept out of the first warm-up game. The new format of the World Cup sees each team from among the 10 playing against every other side. The top four teams in the points table will proceed to the semis and then the Final. England are regarded as the hot favourites. Haiving lost in three World Cup Finals, they are keen to finally get their hands on the trophy.
