With Steve Smith banned for the 2018 Indian Premier League (IPL) after the ball-tampering row in the Newlands Test against South Africa, Rajasthan Royals (RR) has turned to South Africa wicketkeeper Heinrich Klaasen as his replacement.<\/p>\n
Cricket Australia served Smith and David Warner, who was slated to lead Sunrisers Hyderabad, with a 12-month ban following the incident. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) followed suit and banned the duo from this edition of the tournament, forcing Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad to hunt for new replacements.<\/p>\n
According to Rajasthan Royals head of cricket Zubin Bharucha, Klaasen seems to be the best choice given his ability to tackle spin bowlers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur aim was to get someone who can play spin well because we are pretty sure that spinners will have a big role to play during the IPL,\u201d Bharucha was quoted as saying by Times of India.<\/p>\n
According to Bharucha, the way Klaasen played Indian spinners Yuzuvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav in the limited-overs series early in the year played a key role in their decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cKlaasen is an amazing player of spin. He has a vast array of shots, which tempted us to go for him. He plays the reverse sweep very well,\u201d Bharucha said.<\/p>\n
Bharucha highlighted Klaasen\u2019s role and also conceded that South Africa\u2019s wicketkeeper batsmen was swift in his acceptance of their offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmith will be back with us next year and we did not want to end up with two similar players. Our idea was to build the team keeping three years in mind. Even after Smith is back, Klaasen will be very useful for us,\u201d said Bharucha.<\/p>\n
Rajasthan Royals are set to pay Klaasen\u2019s base price of Rs.50 lakh while the Rs.12.5 Crore used to retain Smith will be blocked for the Australian batsman\u2019s services next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Steve Smith banned for the 2018 Indian Premier League (IPL) after the ball-tampering row in the Newlands Test against South Africa, Rajasthan Royals (RR) has turned to South Africa wicketkeeper Heinrich Klaasen as his replacement. Cricket Australia served Smith and David Warner, who was slated to lead Sunrisers Hyderabad, with a 12-month ban following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26459,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26457\/revisions\/26459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}