Photo by Sarah Ansell

The rarely-sighted White-Clothed Morgan was thought to have been extinct, but there are now hopes that it could return to its habitat at Lord’s as early as this summer.

In a week in which Adil Rashid and Alex Hales both pressed pause on their first-class careers, Morgan has once again shown himself to be one step ahead of the crowd.

When Rashid announced his decision, we floated the idea that for all the talk of focusing and specialising, first-class cricket might actually provide important base training on which short format cricketers can build.

Morgan agrees. Speaking to Sky Sports, he said he was looking to play in the County Championship this season.

“The reason I’ve always worked trying to play red ball cricket is my technique isn’t very good and I always struggle my first 20 balls and I’m a slow starter.

“Striving to play red ball cricket always made me work on my technique a little bit more. My technique’s normally okay [against the red ball] and I tend to hit it further and play it later.

“That’s why I’ve been hesitant to make a decision [like Rashid’s]. It’s not been having aspiration to play Test cricket – I don’t.”

If others take a similar view, this would be good news for the County Championship and consequently the Test team. However, they should probably still trim the competition by a few matches to persuade the likes of Hales and Rashid that the workload would be productive and not counterproductive.

Photo by Sarah Ansell

Remember when Eoin Morgan was the exciting one. Remember how you used to shout “Morgan’s in!” when he came to the crease and how the person you were shouting to used to respond: “I don’t care. I don’t like cricket.”

Remember how you used to flaunt your knowledge by telling everyone within earshot that those miraculous rubber-wristed shots were down to Morgan’s background in hurling. Remember how, shortly after, you use to flaunt your knowledge by telling everyone that actually, he didn’t play those shots because of hurling, because he never really played the game.

Good times. Great memories. Different times. Old memories.

Nowadays Morgan’s a middle-order rock. He’s not the flamboyant one. He’s the guy who’ll hold things together with a nuggetty 45 off 38 balls while the guy at the other end switch-hits reverse-ramp maximums and canes it to cow corner.

Reverse sweeps are passé. Morgan’s an anachronism. Sometimes, if you squint quite a bit, it even looks like he’s smoking a pipe and wearing a monocle when he’s walking out to bat, as if he’s just set down his glass of port and risen from a Chesterfield wingback armchair.

We’re not even sure that he has any tattoos. Maybe he does, somewhere – but not so many that he looks like a guy who’s going to try and sell you some stilton in a canalside pub in some dark corner of the Midlands.

He doesn’t even keep wicket. Just think about that. Here’s a guy playing short format cricket in 2015 who doesn’t bowl and who also doesn’t keep wicket. Of course he’s the captain – they had to give him something to do other than bat.

WiFi on aeroplanes, paleo diets and Eoin Morgan taking second, third or fourth billing in an England one-day batting line-up. The modern world is a strange and unsettling place.

Photo by Sarah Ansell

We’re proud to say that we were at the worst international match of the summer yesterday. We sensed it wasn’t going to be a rip-snorter from the moment when Jason Roy was given out for the second time in the first over. At least it was sunny. We’ll do a match report at some point, but it’s way down the queue and will probably appear in about February.

One of the most striking moments of the day was when Eoin Morgan was pinged on the side of the head. Sometimes players get a glancing blow and you don’t really worry, but this was really square on and the most horrifying thing was probably how far the ball bounced back after hitting him. We were also there when Stuart Broad took one in the face, so maybe our presence is some sort of distraction.

Morgan has often looked a candidate for this sort of thing. Once he’s up and running, he can cope with anything, but when he’s playing himself in, he really doesn’t seem to deal with short, fast deliveries at all well. Trevor Bayliss says they’ll work on it. Hopefully they can minimise the likelihood of sustaining brain injuries and if in so doing they improve his batting, so much the better.

When the England captain ain’t making runs, the drill goes like this: journalist asks one of his team-mates about his loss of form; team-mate describes him as ‘world class’ and says there’s nothing to worry about.

It was Joe Root earlier in the week and now it’s Jimmy Anderson’s turn.

“Morgs is a world-class player and has been for however many games he’s played. He’s been great for us and we’re just hopeful he can get some form because we’ve seen how destructive he can be when he’s in form.”

While Root may not actually have used the term ‘world class’, that was the gist and it’s certainly a phrase you’ll hear a lot from England players – often about struggling team-mates, but also in reference to far-from-struggling opponents.

But what is world class? What does it mean? If it means suitable for the World XI who are pencilled in for a several millennia long tour of GU Piscium b or wherever then the term is being thrown about a little too freely. If it simply means ‘among the best in the world’ then it seems something of a back-handed compliment. Surely any international cricketer is by definition among the best cricketers in the world?

Don’t suppose it matters really. Australia v England tomorrow. We’re actually – genuinely – looking forward to it. Come on the Englands. Show your (world) class.

We knew this site would become a hub for celebrity gossip one day. We received a surge in traffic yesterday off the back of the fully weird news that someone tried to blackmail the ECB over some sort of relationship Eoin Morgan once had with a human woman.

The landing page of choice for those digging into the story was this one about whether or not Eoin Morgan had a girlfriend. It’s from 2010 and in it we give some excellent and entirely plausible reasons why a woman might like to enter into a relationship with England’s now one-day captain.

If you read the comments, there is a marked change in tone from those left within a couple of days of the post being published and those left later on. See if you can spot it.

He’s been kind of crap of late and even when he has made runs in Tests, they’ve seemed a bit jousey. However, at the same time, he’s been a pyrotechnic gnarl-dog in one-day internationals and they ain’t ten a penny.

Should England drop him? He’s not the only one to have failed to make runs in this series and he made a hundred not long before. Have we been spoilt by the likes of Strauss, Cook, Prior and Trott, all of whom made tons on Test debut? Are we so impatient we punch the microwave for its tardiness?

Then again, can 15 Tests count as being early days? It’s not what it was, because those matches sit alongside 71 one-day internationals – 71 one-day internationals in which he’s been pretty damn good.

Arguments, counter-arguments, assertions, rebuttals, Ravi Bopara and lists of words. Is there meaning in this post or do all these question marks hint at an arse-prangingly prolonged bout of fence-sitting?

Not sure if this opinion is even a slightly different shade of grey to the one the other day.

Morgan or Bopara? Sounds like it was close. The national selector, Geoff Miller, said:

“The controlled innings that Eoin played just gave him the nod.”

When a batsman is being picked to play against Sri Lanka, scoring 193 against Sri Lanka will advance your cause.

We’re not sure why Ravi Bopara neglected to score 193 against Sri Lanka, but in hindsight, that was an error.