Injury Forces AB de Villiers To Sit Out Of RCB’s Fixture against Gujarat Lions Tonight
Apr 18, 2017 at 4:57 PM
The Royal Challenger Bangalore will be without their star batsman – AB de Villiers – for tonight’s crucial fixture against Gujarat Lions. The news was broken by the cricketer himself on social networking site Twitter.
He tweeted: “Disappointed to be missing the match tonight for RCB, due to injury. Good luck to @imVkohli and the team. Lets go @RCBTweets !!”
https://twitter.com/ABdeVilliers17/status/854281030852915202
RCB is currently lying at the bottom of the points table and every game from this stage is deemed as a must win the game for them at the moment. But, despite finding themselves at this stage after their recent loss to Rising Pune Supergiants, the franchise was hopeful for making a comeback.
Unfortunately, it seems that it will be tough for them now, at least for tonight as they prepare to play without one of their batting pillars tonight.
RCB has been injury affected right since the start of the season. First, there were rumours about Virat Kohli missing out the entire season due to the shoulder injury he inflicted during the Border-Gavaskar Series last month.
The speculations later turned out to be meaningless as BCCI clarified that he was supposed to get well in a matter of a week or two. This was a bright news for the franchise but the IPL schedule starting at April 5th meant they were forced to start the tournament without their skipper.
While Kohli recovered, KL Rahul wasn’t that lucky as he had to miss the entire season due to a shoulder injury. The problem required him to undergo a surgery in London and a rest for 6 to 8 weeks.
Ab de Villiers also arrived with back issues surrounding him. Just a day before arriving in India, ABD made his RCB patrons bit nervous after he decided to skip the finals of a domestic tournament due to back pain. As a result, De Villiers, too, arrived late, missing the first two games against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Daredevils.
In the absence of such players, RCB were off to a very bad start. They lost two out of the three matches at the start before Kohli returned to the team in the fourth match against Mumbai Indians. They currently are in a situation similar to that of last year.
The danger of elimination is hovering over the head of last year’s runners-up and the team needs to do something really special to make themselves look like strong contenders in the tournament.