I had a bit of a look at Eoin Morgan's career stats. My motivation was the decision by Adil Rasid and Alex Hales to turn down first class contracts with Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire to focus on 1 day cricket and 20/20. Presumably the ECB must be happy with their decisions as both players are on England 1 day contracts and the ECB could have lent on them to play first class cricket. As usual Trevor Baylis was impressively off message
Eoin Morgan's career might be a guide to how that decision will impact on the performance of Hales and Rashid. Morgan has, effectively, also retired from first class cricket. Although there was no big announcement, the last first class game he played was in the English summer of 2015. In fact Morgan is a poster boy for a light schedule, in 2017 I reckon he played 43 games of cricket, made up of 18 50 over games and 25 20 over games.
Morgan has played in 200 ODIs in total, and 46 from 2016 onwards (i.e. since his retirement from first class cricket). Since 2016 he has scored 1,339 runs at an average of 35.2 and a strike rate per hundred balls of 90.7. That is slightly worse than his ODI career figures, averaging 37.2 with a strike rate of 88.0. And quite a bit worse than his 177 games as an England ODI player: 177 games, 5,287 runs at 37.5 with a strike rate of 91.0.
I don't think it is possible to claim Morgan has improved as a one day player since he retired from first class cricket, you could easly discern a slight falling away in his performances. Similarly Morgan's 20/20 career hasn't progressed since 2016 and he hasn't been offered a contract in the 2018 IPL. One player is a small sample of course and it will be interesting to see how Hales and Rashid get on, I predict not very well.
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