“Yeah, I feel a lot better than I did a week ago,” he said during a virtual press conference on Wednesday. “The plan moving forward is to remove the stitches tomorrow and progress with my batting in the coming days and fielding on the back of that. Given the time frame I have available, it’s looking very good,” he added.
Morgan, who took charge of the side midway last season, felt the side this time has all bases covered. “Last year, we saw the flexibility in our middle order that helped in promoting DK, Sunil (Narine) or me. We need to make the right call on when to play the best hand and that is one thing we have learnt from the last year,” he stated.
The skipper is happy with the side’s bench strength too. “One of the challenges for a successful campaign in a long tournament like the IPL is the battle with injury and illness that come along the way, whether you like it or not. So planning needs to be in place to cover all the areas. We did that this year at the auction, which we’re hoping will best position ourselves. Apart from being quite a versatile team when it comes to selection, we also have strength and depth.”
Talking about chalking out team strategy in this IPL, the middle-order batsman said, “We are due to get together towards the end of the week in which we will discuss our plans and thoughts and talk about our strengths as a squad.”
Welcoming all the new faces in the side, Morgan felt inclusion of Harbhajan Singh will boost the squad. “I think adding Harbhajan to our squad has strengthened our spin department. If you look at our spin department, on paper it is one of the best in the tournament. We have to play in Chennai and it can turn there. Our spinners would have bowled well if we do well in the tournament,” he said.
Harbhajan will join Caribbean off-spinner Sunil Narine, chinaman Kuldeep Yadav, leg-spinner Varun Chakravarthy and two slow left-arm spinners Pawan Negi and Shakib Al Hasan in KKR.