Follow UsAhead of the Indian Premier League 2025’s restart, RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, confirmed that the franchise’s star pacer Josh Hazlewood isn’t in India and is recovering from an injury.
Bobat detailed out, stating that the right-arm pacer has been recovering from a shoulder niggle, and the franchise has been in constant touch with Cricket Australia (CA) over his involvement. Before the tournament was suspended, Hazlewood missed the clash against CSK, which RCB won by two runs.
“With Josh [Hazlewood, he's our only player not here at the moment. He's recovering from his shoulder niggle that he had. He's doing that with Cricket Australia. Our medical team and their medical teams have been liaising on what that detail looks like and he's just taking that day by day and he's trying to improve his shot."
However, the positive news is that their skipper, Rajat Patidar, who was suffering from an injury, has begun training and could return to the playing XI over the next few days.
“Rajat's going well. He had an injury to his hand, but he's been building up ever so slowly. For him personally, probably the disruption gave him a few more days just to get through some of that early healing, and for the swelling to go down, and for him to get used to picking up a bat again. He's practiced the last few days and he's going well,” Bobat confirmed.
Though all players are available for the league stage, RCB will face an issue during the playoffs when the duo of Jacob Bethell and Lungi Ngidi will be out of the competition due to national commitment.
“We've had a good season so far. They want to come back and do that. The extending of the season presented some challenges. I had to have a few conversations with some of the national team governing bodies. Obviously, we'll lose Jacob Bethel after a couple of games and we'll lose Lungi Ngidi after a couple of games. There's an obvious impact there,” he added.
“In time, we'll give a little bit of thought to those replacements and we'll try and look at who might be able to come in to shore up those positions. Other than those couple of guys, nothing else was disrupted too much.”