The Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Rajasthan Royals (RR) has roped-in Heinrich Klaasen, the South Africa wicketkeeper-batsman, as a replacement for Australian batsman Steven Smith, who was banned from playing IPL 2018 as he guilty of the ball-tampering scandal in the Cape Town Test.
Klaasen made his international debut against India in February this year and was one of the most successful Proteas batsmen in the limited-overs series. He played an innings of 43 off 27 balls and helped his team to register their only win of the series in the pink-day ODI, which has been considered as the biggest limited-overs fixture in South Africa.
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In T20s, Klaasen bats with a strike-rate of 146 even after 44 innings and was regarded as one of the few South African players able to cope with the wrist pin of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal.
RR bought him at his base price of INR 50 lakh (approx USD 77000) – Klaasen was unsold at the IPL player auction in January, but now he will be filling the huge void left by Smith, who was barred from playing all international cricket, and domestic matches in Australia, for 12 months by Cricket Australia.
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Royals might also need to find a replacement of Ben Stokes, who is due to be in court to challenge a charge of affray. The IPL will allow the RR a replacement player for the England all-rounder only if he is ruled out of the tournament before it begins as a result of the legal proceedings. If Stokes gets ruled out of the IPL then, it’s going to be a daunting task for the Rajasthan Royals even to qualify for the playoffs.
Rajasthan Royals IPL 2018 squad:
Ajinkya Rahane (capt), D’Arcy Short, Rahul Tripathi, Aryaman Birla, Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, Prashant Chopra, Heinrich Klaasen, Ben Stokes, Stuart Binny, Jofra Archer, K Gowtham, Jatin Saxena, Mahipal Lomror, Zahir Khan, Shreyas Gopal, Midhun S, Ankit Sharma, Anureet Singh, Jaydev Unadkat, Dhawal Kulkarni, Dushmantha Chameera, Ben Laughlin
