Eoin Morgan is clear about his priorities. “The IPL is all about results,” the Kolkata Knight Riders captain said after the 10-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday.

As an example, the World Cup-winning England captain spoke of Harbhajan Singh. The veteran off-spinner was given the ball in the very first over and he bowled decently well, but thereafter he was not called on to bowl again as that suited the team. Morgan highlighted how a lot of thinking goes into planning and how important is the support from his teammates in its execution.

“There’s a huge amount of thought and structure that goes into decisions on the field. We’ve got a great head coach (Brendon McCullum) and support staff. The IPL is all about results. I think guys are buying in to what we are trying to do.

“Like Bhajji starting really well in the first over and not bowling after that, but using his experience to guide the others,” Morgan said at the post-match presentation ceremony.

Morgan also spoke about the team’s preparations going into the tournament. “The build-up to the tournament has been pretty good. The camp before the tournament, the guys seemed to gel really well. I thought it was magnificent how the guys batted today at the top of the order… particularly, Nitish (Rana) and (Rahul) Tripathi. And the bowling too, couldn’t have asked for a better start. It was a tight game against a really tough side.”

Morgan’s counterpart, David Warner, rued leaking too many runs when they bowled. “I didn’t think there were that many runs in that wicket. We just mis-executed a little bit (with the ball),” the Australian said.

He, however, was happy with the batting effort and hoped that it would help them moving forward. “The way that we lost two early wickets but fought hard through Jonny (Bairstow) and Manish (Pandey), it was really good.”