England star all rounder Ben Stokes\u2019s father\u2019s illness has kept him out of action since England\u2019s test series against Pakistan and is a major doubt for IPL 2020.\u00a0Should he be unavailable, it would severely impact Rajasthan Royals\u2019 campaign at this year\u2019s Indian Premier League 2020.<\/p>\n
Rajasthan Royals team core comprises of three Englishmen \u2014 Stokes, Jos Buttler and Jofra Archer along with their Australian skipper Steve Smith. However, it is the magnificence of Strokes that defines the Royals, the perennial under-performers. They boasted quality players in their line up over the years but did not get the desired result.<\/p>\n
His father\u2019s illness has kept him out of action for some time now and his absence, certainly in the first half of the league, would disturb the balance of the side. If Stokes could join in the second half, the responsibility of keeping the side alive for the play-offs would be on their foreign recruits since Indian players in the set up do not inspire much confidence.<\/p>\n
Buttler and Archer are expected to be available from the second game after their mandatory quarantine and their good form is a silver lining for the Royals. However there is a concern among the camp with regards to their skipper Smith\u2019s current form. Smith suffered another concussion hit in the UK during a recent training session.<\/p>\n
The other two foreigners who can take some load off are South African batsman David Miller and Australian pacer Andrew Tye. For the Royals, the problem is their Indian core which hasn\u2019t exactly been consistent. Sanju Samson, an IPL specialist, is a minefield of talent but has rarely performed in five straight games in any of the editions during the past five years.<\/p>\n
Robin Uthappa, once a prolific IPL player, has not been able to perform consistently. Jaydev Unadkat, after one stellar season with now-defunct Rising Pune Supergiants, hasn\u2019t been able to replicate the form for Royals. A million-dollar-plus price tag is weighing heavily on him.<\/p>\n
The inconsistencies of Varun Aaron and Manan Vohra do no good to the confidence of the team. This leaves the rookies Riyan Parag and left-handed opener Yashasvi Jaiswal to complete the task which might be too much to ask for considering their inexperience.<\/p>\n
Should not Ben Stokes be available, it would be a mountain to climb for the Rajasthan Royals to win the tournament without the services of their star man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben Stokes\u2019 father\u2019s illness has kept him out of action since England\u2019s Test series against Pakistan and there is uncertainty over his availability for the IPL <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":38941,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[255,465],"class_list":["post-18205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ipl","tag-ben-stokes","tag-rajasthan-royals"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}