Tuesday 1 December 2015 12:20, UK
Eoin Morgan is excited by the progress of England's limited overs side and feels they can contend at the World Twenty20 in March.
England improved their T20 ranking from eighth to fourth with a 3-0 whitewash over Pakistan as their tour of the United Arab Emirates ended in thrilling fashion on Monday.
Chris Jordan produced six wonderful balls in a Super Over in Sharjah, allowing Pakistan to score only three runs, and Morgan and Jos Buttler saw England to victory with a ball to spare.
Morgan feels England still have some way to go, but could not resist a smile after the whitewash was confirmed, before turning his attentions to matches with South Africa and the World T20.
"I think we're still in the development stage," said Morgan. "But it's pretty exciting, the acceleration of our learning curve is happening quite quickly because we're winning, we're growing in confidence and building momentum.
"We're learning as much as we can from each other as opposed to back-tracking and learning from opposition the whole time.
"Not to get too carried away, I think this is the start of something. We've built a great base to start on, guys are contributing to performances all the time and it's not easy to do when you've such a young side.
"When we started at the beginning of the summer, I reckon we had five guys who'd played less than 10 games. Hopefully this time next year, they'll have played 30.
"It's important we keep these 17-20 players together and get as much experience together as we can."
England embark on a long tour of South Africa on December 11, but the T20 team will have to wait until February 19 for the first of two short-format matches against the Proteas, which come just over a fortnight before the World T20 starts in India.
"If we can take this form into South Africa and on from there, who knows? We're in the best position we could be at the moment," Morgan added.
"We're a very new side, we've only played five games together as a squad, but we're in the best position we can be with our side.
"I think collectively as a group we're quite exciting. We have 15 athletes, fitness is a priority of ours, we're always striving to improve our fielding.
"I suppose the toughest thing we were going to encounter was the conditions, playing Pakistan on home soil is a very difficult task. We've countered that to a certain extent, but we haven't played a complete performance throughout both series."
