File photo of Glenn Maxwell© BCCI
Punjab Kings’ Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell is “likely” out of the Indian Premier League’s remaining matches after fracturing his finger. Maxwell suffered the injury before PBKS’ rained out previous game against Kolkata Knight Riders in which he was dismissed for 7 continuing an underwhelming season. He was replaced by Suryansh Shedge in last night’s clash against Chennai Super Kings that PBKS won by four wickets. “Unfortunately, Maxi’s broken his finger. He broke it just before the last game at training. He didn’t think it was too bad, but it ended up getting pretty bad. He had scans and yeah, the results weren’t great. So unfortunately for Maxi, I think it’s likely he’s out for the tournament,” Maxwell’s compatriot and PBKS teammate Marcus Stoinis told ‘Jiostar’.
Punjab head coach Ricky Ponting said the side is currently trying to figure a suitable replacement which may not be easy to find.
“We will be signing some replacements at some stage,” Ponting said in the post-match press conference when asked about the injury setback.
“We’ve got until our 12th game, so we have a couple of games to go yet. With the squad we’ve got, we’re trying to find players in our squad anyway. So we’ve got Azmatullah (Omarzai), Aaron Hardie who hasn’t played yet, Xavier Bartlett who didn’t play today.
“It’s conditions based. But when we get to Dharamsala he will come back into the reckoning up there, where the ball might swing and bounce a little bit more,” he explained.
Ponting said the side is having a good look at the Indian talent that it has as international options are limited due to other ongoing leagues.
“…there’s not a lot of high quality replacements out there to be honest. So we’ve just been patient,” he said.
“We’re having a look around at Indian talent as well and we’re looking at what roles we might be able to fill with some younger Indian players. We’ll actually take a couple of guys to Dharamsala with us, a couple of guys trained with us yesterday and they will come with us to Dharamsala.
“…we’ll have a closer look at them and they might find themselves with a Punjab contract going forward (smiles). It has to be this week, has to be before the 12th game so stay tuned.”
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