In a surprising development, the star South Africa National Cricket Team pacer Kagiso Rabada is not playing the 56th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 on Tuesday, May 6.
The Gujarat Titans (GT) are playing an away fixture in the Indian Premier League 2025 against the Mumbai Indians (MI) at the iconic Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
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He will need some practice – Shubman Gill on Kagiso Rabada
Kagiso Rabada just recently returned to India for the Indian Premier League 2025 after leaving the tournament midway due to ‘personal reasons’.
The real reason behind his travel back home was revealed a couple of days ago. It was revealed that the pacer Kagiso Rabada had been banned from playing cricket after testing positive for recreational drug use.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference, GT’s director of cricket, Vikram Solanki, confirmed that Kagiso Rabada was available for selection for the match against the Mumbai Indians after being cleared to return.
However, Kagiso Rabada was not included in the playing XI, and Shubman Gill revealed the reason behind his non-selection. The GT captain said that the premier South African pacer needs some more practice before he gets ready to play matches.
“Rabada is back (in the squad), but he will need some practice and a few games to get back in his groove,” the Gujarat Titans GT skipper, Shubman Gill, said at the toss.
Notably, Rabada failed a doping test, which was conducted on January 21, after the SA20 match between MI Cape Town and Durban Super Giants. He received the result of the test on April 1 when he was in India, and a ban of three months was handed down to him.
However, it was trimmed to one month after Rabada participated in an education and awareness program to prevent further substance abuse and received a green signal to play competitive cricket.
We are fortunate that we can use Kishore when needed – Shubman Gill
Shubman Gill also revealed that they have made one change to their playing XI by bringing in Arshad Khan in place of Washington Sundar.
He further expressed delight over the presence of 6 to 7 bowling options in the team and talked about the star spinner, Sai Kishore, as well. Gill said:
“It’s all about delivering our best as a team. We have one change. Arshad comes back for Sundar. We are fortunate that we can use Kishore when needed. We have 6-7 bowling options.”
For us it’s important to execute our plans – Hardik Pandya
Meanwhile, the Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya highlighted the importance of being ruthless and executing plans in the highly competitive Indian Premier League. He said:
“For, us it’s important to execute our plans. In IPL, anyone can come in and change a game. We need to stick to our plans and be ruthless for 20 overs. We need to maintain discipline, need to be humble and focussed. We are playing with the same team.”