One one hand, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) received a major boost as all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has got fit and will play in the ODI series against India in March, on the other hand, fast bowler Josh Hazlewood is likely to miss the initial few matches of IPL 2023 due to his Achilles issue.
Josh Hazlewood didn’t feature in two two Test matches so far in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy before being ruled out of the remainder of the series and the ODI series next month due to Achilles tendonitis injury. He has returned home for treatment.
“Josh Hazlewood out, he’ll be going home,” Andrew McDonald, the Australia head coach, said on Monday.
It is still not clear whether the lanky Australian seamer will be fit in time to play RCB’s first match of IPL 2023 against Mumbai Indians on April 2.
Given that Hazlewood will not play in the 3-ODI series in India, which will end on March 22, it is difficult to see him getting fit for the IPL 2023, which will start 9 days after the ODI series.
Josh Hazlewood is one of the premier T20 bowlers in the world, and he was instrumental in RCB’s success in IPL 2022 last year when the team reached the playoffs and won the Eliminator before losing the Qualifier 1, failing one step from the final.
In IPL 2022, Josh Hazlewood picked 20 wickets in 12 matches
“Just a bit of workload management at the moment. Just managing the Achilles. I was bowling a fair bit leading into the tour at home and sort of just pushing up against it,” Hazlewood said. “Probably wasn’t recovering as well as I would have liked between each session, so thought we’d give it a few days here straight off the bat and try and get over the hump and have a bowl from Tuesday on (in Nagpur) and hope it goes well.”
