The South African cricket team captain Faf du Plessis is not holding his words while taking his team to task for the ICC Cricket World 2019 debacle and this time he has blamed Indian Premier League (IPL) for the below par performance of its spearhead pacer Kagiso Rabada.
The South Africa skipper Du Plessies even revealed that South Africa team management had tried to stop Rabada from taking part in IPL 2019, prior to the World Cup.
“We did try and get him (Rabada) not to go to the IPL; to try and stay and get fresh. That wasn’t the case of — and then when he went there, we were like, let’s try and get him back halfway through the IPL because it’s important, not just for him, but a few other players,” said du Plessis.
“I mean, I spoke about it before the IPL even started, that it’s important that we try and find space to rest our three-format players, because they play all the formats all the time, and then IPL.” Du Plessis’ comments came after South Africa bowed out of the World Cup with a 49-run defeat to Pakistan.
Rabada, who was supposed to lead the South Africa bowling attack in the absence of Steyn, did not live up to his reputation. With six wickets in six outings at an average of 50.83, he had an ordinary World Cup to say the least. And it reflected on South Africa’s performance as the Proteas managed to win only one – that too against Afghanistan – out of their 7 matches .
“So I don’t think it’s not necessarily just the IPL, but it was important for a few guys to rest; and the fact that they didn’t meant that they — you know, they came into the tournament not fresh. That’s not an excuse; that’s just a fact. And KG is — you can see that his pace is probably a little bit down from where he normally is,” du Plessis said.
This was not the first time du Plessis pointed fingers at the IPL. He had done the same when Steyn was ruled out of the tournament earlier this month.