England all-rounder Ben Stokes has been ruled out of the entire Indian Premier League (IPL) owing to a finger injury which he sustained while fielding against Punjab Kings for Rajasthan Royals. However, he is out for three months, shared England and Wales Cricket Board on Friday.
“England all-rounder Ben Stokes will be out for up to 12 weeks after a repeat X-ray and CT scan on Thursday revealed that he has a fracture of his left index finger,” ECB said in its statement.
“Stokes, who is currently in India with Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League, will fly home tomorrow. He will have surgery in Leeds on Monday,” it further added.
However, Ben Stokes picked up the injury while he was grabbing a catch in the deep to remove Chris Gayle in their opening match. The injury means he wouldn’t be featured in the rest of the IPL as well as England’s Test series against New Zealand in June too. Moreover, he will be doubtful for England’s five-match Test series against India too, which is scheduled to begin in August.
However, the Rajasthan Royals had initially announced that Ben Stokes wouldn’t be featured in IPL 2021 due to the finger injury. While they said that he would stay back in India with the team for the rest of the tournament, now he is flying back to England for his surgery.
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Meanwhile, Rajasthan Royals have won their second game in a thrilling fashion on the back of Chris Morris. He said after the win: “I thought Delhi bowled really well, David played an unplayable knock. T20 cricket anything can happen in the end, fortunately went our way in the end. (When asked about the single denied in the previous game) I was gonna run back no matter what to sacrifice because Sanju was hitting it so sweetly. Sanju was hitting it like a dream, I wouldn’t have been too upset if he had hit the last ball for a six. Dew plays a part here at the Wankhede, it does start to skid on.”
“They hit the back of a length a lot better than we did. We got a few wickets early on, but they hit their lengths way better than we did. Our guys are experienced in taking pace off the ball and executed really well today. If we had to chase 140 odd when we got here, we would have taken it, so happy to get over the line. There are guys who get paid to bat and there are guys who get paid to slog, I know what I am. I am a slogger that swings everything I can, I play so much golf. The last game, the close game, we took so much out of that as a team. Chasing 222, it’s quite a daunting task. For us to get as close as we did on the day, we took a lot out of that first game of ours. Guys took a lot of confidence into the game, but it’s quite nice to know that we can win a game basically from anywhere after being down in the dumps. That’s T20 cricket,” he concluded.
