CAPE TOWN: England's white-ball skipper Eoin Morgan on Thursday defended his team receiving signals from the dressing room to help make better decisions on the field during a match.
His remark comes as television coverage of the third T20I between England and South Africa clearly showed England's white-ball analyst, Nathan Leamon, giving signals to the Morgan-led side.
As per ESPNCricinfo, the cameras had caught Leamon placing white cards at the front of the players' balcony and it displayed combinations of numbers and letters. This was being done in order to help Morgan's decisions in terms of bowling combinations as per the game situation.
"Captains are different. You get captains that really enjoy the title, the power, and the accolades that go with it, and then you have other captains that continue to be pushed and want to learn for the benefit of the team. For me, this is a system that we're going to use to try and help myself and the other leaders in the side, to take the emotion of the decision-making on the field and compare that to the hard data that is continuing to feed data into us, and the guys off the field," ESPNCricinfo quoted Morgan as saying.
"There weren't many decisions that varied: I think there were three in the first game, two in the second game, and a couple in the third. It's nice to know that the majority of the decisions that myself, Jos, and the bowlers on the field were making actually replicate what we feel is right in the game. 100 per cent, it's within the spirit of the game. There's nothing untoward about it. It's about maximising the information that we're taking in, and measuring it against things like coaches' recommendations, the data, what's going on. We're definitely going to continue with it, and give it enough of a sample size to see if it makes a difference to, or improves, our decision-making on the field or our performance," he added.
The signals being given by Leamon suggested as to who should be bowling the next over and a possible field setting. As soon as cameras caught Morgan receiving signals from team analyst, reactions started coming in and former England skipper Michael Vaughan was quick to disapprove of it, saying the skipper should be the one to make final calls.
"There has always been constant communication -- verbal or physical -- from the changing room to us on the field to help improve my decisions as captain and Jos's decisions as vice-captain, to try and correlate the feeling of the flow of the game and what we think are the right decisions [with] the data that we've already researched coming into the game," said Morgan.
"It's something we've used a lot pre-game, and are experimenting with during the game now in order to try and see if we can improve our performance on the field. We're always looking to improve our performance as a team, and certainly me as captain, I want to get the best out of our players in order to get the best out of our team," he added.
England white-washed South Africa in the three-match T20I series, and now, both teams will lock horns in the three-match ODI series, beginning Friday.