There’s not much to worry about Eoin Morgan as the stitches on the Kolkata Knight Riders captain’s split webbing between the right thumb and index finger is set to be removed on Thursday.

He himself sounded optimistic of his availability for KKR’s opening game, versus Sunrisers Hyderabad in Chennai on April 11.

“I feel a lot better than I did probably a week ago,” Morgan said during a virtual media interaction on Wednesday.

“The plan moving forward is to remove the stitches tomorrow (Thursday) and then continue to progress in my batting in the coming days and over the week, and then fielding at the back end of that.”

KKR’s spin department is also their strong point since now it comprises Shakib-al Hasan alongside Narine and Varun Chakravarthy. But according to Morgan, the addition of distinguished former India off-spinner Harbhajan Singh has further strengthened their spin attack.

Morgan seemed quite enthusiastic about youngsters Prasidh Krishna and Shubman Gill. “I ongratulated Prasidh after the toss (post his international debut in the first ODI versus England) and told him, ‘Today is a special day’.

“For me, debuts are not entirely about the player. They are about the bigger picture — the family, friends and the journey the player has been on. All those volunteers, club cricketers, the culture within the town and village where you live have all made contributions for you to get there and made sacrifices of different magnitudes.

“It’s a celebration of that achievement. It was great to see Prasidh do well for India.

“Shubman is of a little bit of different phase. He played quite a bit and had gone and experienced quite a difficult overseas tour of Australia and came back with a huge amount of confidence being part of a successful campaign,” he said.

Covid precautions

KKR are “sparing no expense” in adhering to the bio-bubble atmosphere for the coming weeks and have thus appointed a “bubble manager” and “bubble integrity manager” to ensure everything is in order.