Former national cricket board chief Sourav Ganguly has announced that India’s Rishabh Pant will be missing the Indian Premier League. Last month, the India star got into a road accident and suffered multiple injuries.
“Rishabh Pant will not be available for the IPL. I am in connection with Delhi Capitals. It will be a great IPL (for the team), we will do well but Rishabh Pant’s injury will affect the Delhi Capitals,” said Ganguly.
Back in December, Pant reportedly fell asleep at the wheel before the crash. According to Uttarakhand DGP Ashok Kumar, Pant’s car collided with a divider after which his car burnt down.
Pant was rescued by a bus driver and conductor but got a damaged ligament in his right knee, a hurt wrist and ankle, and abrasions on his back from the accident.
After the accident, the 25-year-old was rushed to the hospital. Following some treatment, the BCCI stepped in and got the Indian wicketkeeper-batter airlifted to Mumbai, where he was admitted to the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital where he underwent knee ligament surgery.
So far, no reports have confirmed a replacement for the wicket-keeper batter. During his recovery, KS Bharat, Upendra Yadav, and Ishan Kishan were up for consideration as his replacement. David Warner, who had led the Sunrisers Hyderabad to the title in 2016, however, is the favorite to become the new Delhi Capitals captain for IPL 2023 season while Pant recovers.
Pant is captain of the Delhi Capitals side in the annual two-month tournament, which is due to begin in late March or April with some of the biggest international stars of the game.
The wicketkeeper-batter is also a mainstay of the Test squad and has played a key role in some of India’s most memorable wins in the last three years.
The player has 2169 runs in 54 Test innings, with 10 fifties and 5 hundred to his name. He has a strike rate of 73.10 and an average of 43.48. Pant is also the eighth Indian player to hit 50 sixes in Test cricket.
In the last ODI series he played, however, Pant failed to make any impact. He was able to amass a total of 25 runs in the 2 innings he played.
Before his accident, Pant was due to head to the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru for strength and conditioning before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in February.
Aside from the IPL Pant is also expected to miss Australia’s upcoming tour of India in February and March, when the arch-rivals will play four Tests. According to sources close to BCCI’s medical team, the doctors at the hospital feel Pant will need a minimum of 8-9 months to make a comeback on the field.
The 2023 Indian Premier League, also known as IPL 16 or, for sponsorship reasons, Tata IPL 2023, will be the sixteenth season of the Indian Premier League. It will start on 20 March 2023, and according to IPL Schedule 2023, the final match will be played on 1 June 2023.
There will be 10 teams playing in this league and a total of 74 league matches. Compared to the previous IPLs, teams of Lucknow and Gujarat have been combined in this year’s IPL.