Faf du Plessis has expressed concern with the scheduling of the Indian Premier League. (Reuters)South Africa skipper Faf du Plessis has expressed concern with the scheduling of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 as the T20 tournament will take place right before the ICC 2019 World Cup. Du Plessis said that he doesn’t want his players to be injured before the 50-over World Cup and maintained that managing workloads of the South African players is something that the support staff will look at closely. The IPL is scheduled to begin on March 29 and is expected to end of 19 May. South Africa’s World Cup opener is on May 30 against hosts England.
“The obvious one for me is the IPL,” du Plessis said while addressing the media. “The IPL is just before the World Cup, and the last thing you want is one of your bowlers getting injured just before the tournament. That’s something that’s a concern for us, seeing how we can play that scenario out best,” he said.
“With Dale [Steyn], or KG [Rabada] or any other bowlers, in terms of workload, the World Cup is still quite a while away. Probably you’ll see that closer to the World Cup we’ll think about stuff like [managing workloads],” he added.
Earlier, Cricket Australia (CA) and England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had also directed their players to play in the IPL for a lesser duration to keep fit for the World Cup. Some of the notable names who backed out of the IPL were Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell.
