Zimbabwe players in IPL 2022: Is Blessing Muzarabani playing 2022 IPL?

Zimbabwe players in IPL 2022: Zimbabwean fast bowler Blessing Muzarabani will have to wait for his maiden appearance in the IPL.

Amongst all the excitement and hype around the commencement of the 15th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), most of the franchises have found themselves in some spot of bother in terms of their overseas players availability.

While the likes of English batters Jason Roy and Alex Hales opted out from the cash-rich league citing bio-bubble fatigue as the reason, pacer Mark Wood was ruled out due to an elbow injury a couple of days ago, which he suffered during the first Test match of the ongoing England’s tour of West Indies.

Mark Wood, who was roped in by the to-be debutant franchise Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at INR 7.5 Crore, has now made way for Australia’s Andrew Tye, with the franchise conforming latter’s signing on Wednesday after quite some confusion across the social media sites.

A day after Wood’s unavailability news became official, it was reported by some sections of the Indian media that Zimbabwe’s pacer Blessing Muzarabani has been roped in as the English pacer’s replacement in the LSG squad for the imminent season of the IPL.

Is Blessing Muzarabani playing 2022 IPL?

Reports conforming Muzarabani’s signing started floating across media circles, after the Indian embassy in Zimbabwe uploaded his picture with the ambassador on social media.

However, it was only after LSG’s twitter handle confirmed Andrew Tye’s signing on Wednesday that it came to the fore that Muzarabani is set to join the franchise as their net bowler for the season.

Zimbabwe players in IPL 2022

Andrew Tye’s inclusion news has meant that no player from Zimbabwe would be part of any of the ten squads in IPL 2022.

Had Blessing Muzarabani been included in the LSG squad, he would have become only the fourth Zimbabwean player to have made it to an IPL squad.

Zimbabwe players in IPL

So far, in the fourteen seasons of the tournament’s existence only three Zimbabwean players in Tatenda Taibu, Ray Price, and Brendan Taylor have been part of an IPL franchise squad.

Tatenda Taibu went on to play three matches for KKR during the inaugural season of the league in 2008, where he scored mere 31 runs at a strike rate of 119.23.

Left-arm spinner Ray Price became the second Zimbabwean to play in the IPL. He, however played just a single match for Mumbai Indians (MI) during the last league match of the 2011 edition.

Former Zimbabwean wicket-keeper batter Brendan Taylor was part of the the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) squad during the 2014 edition of the league. Taylor, however, failed to get a game during the season and did not play ever since.