South African players IPL 2021 availability: When will Quinton de Kock, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi and others reach India?

South African players IPL 2021 availability: The South African players might miss their first respective IPL 2021 match due to national duty.

Named in their ODI squad for an imminent three-match series against Pakistan at home, a five-member South African contingent will leave South Africa after the second ODI on April 4.

As a result, there is a strong possibility that players such as Quinton de Kock (Mumbai Indians), Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje (Delhi Capitals), Lungi Ngidi (Chennai Super Kings) and David Miller (Rajasthan Royals) will miss their first respective match of the upcoming 14th season of the Indian Premier League.

While the ODI series will commence from April 2, the aforementioned players have been allowed to skip the last match and a three-match T20I series which will follow the ODIs.

Other than these players, five other South African players in AB de Villiers (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Chris Morris (Rajasthan Royals), Faf du Plessis and Imran Tahir (Chennai Super Kings) and Marco Jansen (Mumbai Indians) will also take part in IPL 2021 but none of them is part of the current ODI squad.

South African players IPL 2021 availability

With IPL 2021 starting from April 9, a primary reason why these players will miss their first respective match is a mandatory seven-day quarantine period upon reaching India. According to BCCI’s guidelines, players can be exempt from the quarantine period only if they travel from bubble to bubble in a chartered flight.

As of now, there had been no official word from the franchises with respect to arranging chartered flights for their South African players. However, Super Kings CEO Kasi Viswanathan confirming Ngidi’s unavailability for their season opener against Delhi Capitals on April 10 hints at players highly likely to travel by commercial flights.

“[Lungi] Ngidi will join the team only after April 5. Ngidi will have to follow the same guidelines as others and will be put in quarantine once he arrives. Therefore, he will not be available for selection for the opening game,” Viswanathan was quoted as saying by InsideSport recently.

The development will hit Capitals the hardest as their fast-bowling pair of Rabada and Nortje was one of their biggest strengths in their most successful IPL season last year. In such a scenario, expect Capitals to play the English pair of Chris Woakes and Tom Curran in their season opener.

CSK, on the other hand, will have a like-for-like replacement in the form of Australia’s Josh Hazlewood. Both teams could also play an extra overseas batsman and include Indian bowlers to replace the South African players.

To replace a tried and tested name in de Kock, defending champions Mumbai Indians are most likely to play Australia batsman Chris Lynn at the top of the order in addition to giving the wicket-keeping responsibility to Ishan Kishan.

As far as Rajasthan Royals are concerned, they should be unperturbed by the development as Miller is unlikely to feature in their starting XI due to the presence of overseas names such as Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Morris.