England’s ODI captain, Eoin Morgan, was full of praise for Olly Stone and Chris Woakes after his team’s 31-run victory over Sri Lanka in the second ODI in Dambulla. Woakes finished with 3/26 and Stone with 1/23 as the two seamers ripped apart the Sri Lankan top-order in the opening PowerPlay.
“I think the two Warwickshire boys really set the tone from the start – Chris Woakes is a very experienced campaigner and one of our MVPs in the last few years. He is an awesome guy to have in a team and we are very lucky to have him. Olly [Stone] coming in on debut showed exactly what he has shown so far on the tour. He bowled with an extra yard of pace and a great attitude. Obviously it’s a great start to the series for him and hopefully we can build on this.”
“I would like to think we have a few more gears than we showed today. It is obviously early on in the series. We will take a win, we got enough to get a win today, but ultimately, we won’t be that satisfied with the performance.
“It was not a bad start to the series. We have had a bit of an awkward start with training and then the first game with the rain that we have had. I wouldn’t say it has been our best game. I thought batting in the first innings we managed to scrape something together. We probably should have gone past par score. We ended up just scraping towards that, but in essence I don’t think it is a bad run out for us.”
Morgan finished as Player of the Match thanks to his 92 (91) that anchored England’s innings, but he said it took him a while to get himself set.
