- The 16th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is almost approaching.
- Nine South African players will sit out the first few IPL 2023 games.
A total of nine South African players, including Aiden Markram, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, and David Miller, will join their respective IPL teams in India on April 3, four days after the tournament’s start on March 31.
ESPNcricinfo reported that Cricket South Africa (CSA) has informed the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that it wants all of its elite players ready for the two-match home ODI series against the Netherlands, beginning in late March.
The CSA made this choice because South Africa needs to win the series against the Netherlands to automatically qualify for the 2023 World Cup, which will be played in India later this year. The Netherlands have unveiled a potent lineup for the ODIs in South Africa and the series in Zimbabwe. The South Africa matches are slated to take place on March 31 and April 2 in Benoni and Johannesburg, respectively. Both series are a part of the ODI Super League.
Six IPL teams, including the Kavya Maran-owned Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), who recently named Markram as their new skipper, would be impacted by the move. South African players are included in the sides of SRH (Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, Marco Jansen), Delhi Capitals (Nortje, Lungi Ngidi), Mumbai Indians (Tristan Stubbs), Gujarat Titans (Miller), Lucknow Super Giants (Quinton de Kock), and Punjab Kings (Rabada).
A day before the IPL 2023 Auction, in December, the BCCI informed the franchisees of the foreign players that were available. Two days before the start of the IPL, on March 29, the BCCI had announced that players under contract from South Africa would be accessible. But, the BCCI has received an explanation as to why it is necessary for South African contracted players to participate in the Netherlands series, according to CSA’s CEO Pholetsi Moseki.
The BCCI is aware of how crucial the Holland series is to our chances of automatically qualifying for the 2023 World Cup, according to Moseki’s official statement.