PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting addressed the injury crisis within the squad.© BCCI
Punjab Kings (PBKS) head coach Ricky Ponting addressed the injury crisis within the squad after Australia all-rounder Glenn Maxwell was ruled out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) due to a finger injury. Maxwell broke his finger during training, making him the second PBKS player to get sidelined after New Zealand pacer Lockie Ferguson also had a season-ending injury at the start of the tournament. On Wednesday, PBKS captain Shreyas Iyer revealed they haven’t yet decided on Ferguson and Maxwell’s replacements.
“To be honest, we haven’t decided about the replacements yet so far but we are pretty strong in our team’s mindset and what we have outside of our playing XI. We’ve got varieties of players who can win you matches. So we’re going to stick to that as much as possible,” Iyer said, during the toss for PBKS’s match against CSK.
However, Ponting confirmed after the match against CSK that “we will be signing some replacements at some stage.”
Ponting, however, blamed the ongoing Pakistan Super League (PSL) for the lack of quality options as far as the replacements are concerned.
“So we’ve actually been a little bit patient. Maxi’s only been a couple of days, Lockie’s has been two or three weeks. And with the PSL happening at the same time, there’s not a lot of high-quality replacements out there, to be honest. So we’ve just been patient. 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. It has to be this week, has to be before the 12th game, so stay tuned,” he said.
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