Rajasthan Royals misplaced an exhilarating recreation against Punjab Kings in the eighth match of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) season on Wednesday (April 5). The Royals made a wierd determination to open the innings with Ravi Ashwin in the 198-run chase as an alternative of Jos Buttler. The transfer raised loads of eyebrows as Buttler had offered an excellent begin to the Royals in the earlier outing. However, RR skipper Sanju Samson has now revealed that the England batter was not fully match and was having stitches to his finger.
For the unversed, Buttler injured his finger whereas taking a catch to dismiss Shahrukh Khan earlier in the night. He ran from the deep and needed to put in a slide to finish the catch however injured his finger in the course of. Eventually, Jos Buttler required a number of stitches on the little finger of his left hand and therefore, he got here out to bat late in the innings. Moreover, he may rating solely 19 runs off 11 balls earlier than getting out to Nathan Ellis. Speaking about the identical, Sanju Samson stated, “Jos was not fit. He was getting stitches for his finger after the catch.”
To add to their woes, Ashwin who opened the innings bagged a four-ball duck. A variety of questions had been raised on the off-spinner opening as properly with the Royals having Devdutt Padikkal in the ranks. Explaining the determination, Samson said that the plan was to maintain Padikkal in the middle-order to sort out two spinners of Punjab Kings. “The thinking behind keeping Padikkal (in the middle order) was to tackle their two spinners in the middle overs,” he stated.
But even that transfer didn’t work for them as Padikkal struggled proper by his knock scoring solely 21 runs off 26 balls with a solitary 4. Impact Player Dhruv Jurel took the recreation deep with some good hitting, scoring an unbeaten 32 off 15 deliveries. But his efforts went in useless as the Royals fell 5 runs in need of the goal.
