KL Rahul, the captain of the Lucknow Super Giants, has been ruled out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023, and India’s World Test Championship final in June against Australia, with a thigh injury that he sustained earlier this week. He put up a post on Instagram saying he will need surgery to get better and was “absolutely gutted that I won’t be at the Oval next month with Team India. I’ll do everything I can to get back in blue and help my country.”
KL Rahul suffered an injury in his tendon while chasing a ball in the second over of their game against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Monday. He had to be helped off the field at that point and did not come out to bat until a chase of 127 got unexpectedly tense. The 31-year-old walked out to bat at No. 11 in the hopes of winning the game. But he was unable to run between the wickets, which resulted in the No. 9 Amit Mishra facing every single ball of the last over.
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LSG eventually suffered an 18-run loss and then the game got mired in the Virat Kohli vs Gautam Gambhir controversy, which Rahul tried to mitigate by separating the two men. Super Giants are in second place on the IPL points table, with five wins from 10 games.
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Their attempt to reach the playoffs for the second straight season will be coming under the captaincy of Krunal Pandya, who takes over the captaincy on an interim basis. He has already led the team in one game, against Chennai Super Kings, although it got washed out.
This injury puts an end to Rahul’s efforts of amassing more than 500 runs for a sixth successive IPL. He is the only Indian to have even gotten as far as five, and was 226 runs off the mark this time around. Rahul’s career has recently hit a crossroads. India took away his vice-captaincy and dropped him from their Test XI after the first two Border-Gavaskar Trophy matches in February 2023.
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And KL Rahul hasn’t played a T20I for them in almost a year. It’s only in ODIs that he has fixed his position in the team, where he also doubles up as their wicketkeeper. All of this was reflected in his moving down from Grade A to B when the BCCI handed out central contracts two months ago.
