One would imagine that South Africa would be alarmed about Lungi Ngidi’s lower back injury, which would keep him out of the IPL. Those who are more concerned about the XI that South Africa would field in the first stages of the T20 World Cup are relieved instead.
After suffering a lumbar stress fracture six months ago, Anrich Nortje played in his maiden T20 encounter last Friday. Since the first Test match against India in Centurion in December, Gerald Coetzee has been unable to bowl in a match due to a groyne injury. Nevertheless, they will both be present at the IPL, where they need to be handled carefully.
The competition is expected to conclude little over a week before to the World Cup’s commencement. On June 3, South Africa will play their first match of the event in New York versus Sri Lanka. The distance between Ahmedabad, the potential site of the IPL final, and New York is almost 12,000 km, or roughly 10 and a half time zones. For South Africans involved in IPL teams who make it to the final and who are also included in the T20 World Cup squad, the eight days in between will be hectic with travel and recuperation.
South Africa plays the Netherlands five days after their debut, and two days later, they play Bangladesh, both in New York. South Africans will shiver at the names of those opponents. After losing to Bangladesh in their opening encounter of the 2019 ODI World Cup, South Africa’s campaign came to an abrupt end as they were only victorious in three of their eight games. The Dutch defeated their squad to force them out of the 2022 T20 World Cup knockout stages.
They have packed their four group matches in this year’s T20 World Cup into twelve days, with their last match against Nepal on June 15 in St. Vincent. A shaky performance could start a chain reaction. After spending more than two months in the hectic IPL, players may be more prone to mistakes than others when they are abruptly transferred to a different country, faced with unfamiliar circumstances, and new realities.
There are 14 players from South Africa participating in the IPL this year, the majority of them will be in the T20 World Cup selection frame. Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, Tristan Stubbs, Faf du Plessis, Rilee Rossouw, Donovan Ferreira, Dewald Brevis, Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, and Nandre Burger are among them in addition to Nortje and Coetzee.
Though not as much as Ngidi, those whose clubs fall short of the cutoff point in the IPL will have extra time to get back to match fitness for the T20 World Cup. It is hoped that he will return to action in the second half of the current CSA T20 Challenge, which runs through April 28. It reaches its halfway point during the first week of April.
No current South African fast bowler has played more Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) than Ngidi, who made his debut in the format in January 2017. Nor has he taken more wickets (60) or struck at a higher rate (13.00) than Ngidi. Without the issues brought on by the scheduling, he would have played a big role in South Africa’s T20 World Cup preparations. He is now even more so.
Ngidi hasn’t made a big impact in the IPL despite that. From 2018 until 2021, he was signed by the Chennai Super Kings. Since then, he has been with the Delhi Capitals. However, he was never selected for CSK in 2019 and never participated in more than seven games in a single campaign. He was supposed to begin his third season with Delhi, however he hasn’t played for them in a single game. During his six IPL editions, Ngidi has only appeared in fourteen of the 91 games his teams have played. Rabada, on the other hand, has participated in 69 of 84 matches.
Therefore, there was very little reaction on the IPL side of the argument when it was announced on Friday that Ngidi had been ruled out for this season. However, the sighs were nearly audible in South Africa.
