Kamal Ghorui
Injuries, or non-availability, to top pacers close to the start of the IPL can give sleepless nights to franchise coaches and the support staff. While Lucknow Super Giants, for a few years now, have been one of the worst-affected teams, this time around three teams are sweating over their pace resources — Kolkata Knight Riders, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. For KKR, their top two pacers — Harshit Rana and Matheesha Pathirana — are dealing with injuries. They lost Mustafizur Rahman too due to reasons beyond cricket, but have drafted in Zimbabwean Blessing Muzarabani in his place. SRH, too, are in tricky territory over the fitness of their skipper Pat Cummins while it’s not sure whether RCB will get their spearhead Josh Hazlewood from the beginning of the tournament.
TOI takes a look at how the situation might pan out for these teams.Double jeopardy for KKRHarshit Rana, KKR’s star Indian pacer, is set to miss most of the IPL due to a knee surgery. While under threat to even miss the entire IPL season, the management is not naming a replacement right away hoping that the 24-year-old will be fit towards the business end. KKR have a few Indian pacers in Vaibhav Arora and Akash Deep, and they will have to step up along with Muzarabani and Cameron Green. That brings us to their second injury worry, Matheesha Pathirana. The three-time champions paid Rs 18 crore for the former CSK slinger, who is known to be injury-prone. He missed most of the T20 World Cup with a calf injury but reports suggest that he will be fit in time for the IPL. But given his erratic fitness situation, it will be a miracle if Pathirana is fit for most part. That his remodelled action following his injuries has made him less effective as a bowler will also worry the 2024 champions.Captaincy change for SRH?The SRH pace attack revolves around Pat Cummins, in addition to the fact that he is the captain of the team. But the Aussie Test skipper is still recovering from a back injury that was aggravated when he played an Ashes Test despite not being fully fit. There is no clarity when he will be fit and available, and the buzz is that SRH may hand the captaincy to Ishan Kishan, who had quite a superb T20 World Cup with the bat. There’s absolutely no one in the SRH attack who is close to the quality of Cummins in T20s. The likes of Shivam Mavi, Jaydev Unadkat and Ehsan Malinga can be just about serviceable, but it may be a massive challenge for SRH, despite their superb batting line-up should Cummins remain unavailable for long.Not enough Josh for RCBJosh Hazlewood is still recuperating from his hamstring and Achilles heel injuries and hasn’t played cricket for quite some time. In RCB’s first title triumph last year, the Australian had taken 22 wickets at an average of 17.54 and it’s his ability to strike the crucial blows that made a serious difference. The paceman is running against time to be fit and Kiwi pacer Jacob Duffy is likely to play in his absence.Duffy, though a capable bowler, isn’t exactly a threat on Indian pitches and the RCB management will hoping to have Hazlewood back in time to lead the attack with Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yash Dayal as quality support.
