England's limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan and Australian pacer Pat Cummins will both be available for Kolkata's opening game of the 13th edition of the Indian T20 League despite being involved in Australia's ongoing tour of England, team's chief executive Venky Mysore confirmed.
As per reports, Kolkata - who open their league season against Mumbai on September 23 - have asked to reduce the usual 14-day quarantine in Abu Dhabi to seven, meaning that not only Morgan and Cummins, but batsman Tom Banton too can play the opening game against the defending champions on Wednesday.
England, after successful 2-1 win in their T20I series, face Australia in a three-match ODI contest, which ends on September 16, three days before the commencement of the Indian Premier League. And Mysore confirmed that the trio will arrive on September 17, and have a high chance of featuring in the first game.
"While they are still negotiating with the authorities, we are reconciled to the fact that we may have to quarantine our three players," Mysore was quoted as saying.
"They arrive on September 17, but our first game is on September 23, by which time they would've finished their (six-day) quarantine. So it's worked out well, and it's good for the tournament."
He further added that the players arriving from a different bio-secured bubble such as the England-Australia series and even the Caribbean Premier League will not be expected to undergo the mandatory quarantine.
“What we did was put a plan together and shared it with the medical team at the Indian T20 League,” Mysore added.
“We told them, ‘they’re in a bio-secure bubble in UK. What if we brought them on a sanitised charter flight and we took care of all the elements of immigration, testing, contactless stuff and everything to allow them to come right into a bubble here?’ To give credit to IPL, they took it very constructively and they have a written Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for that, which says if you’re coming from a bubble to another bubble, you don’t need the mandatory quarantine period.”
Feature image courtesy: AFP / Ian Kington
