Reports: Injured Shikhar Dhawan might miss initial stages of IPL 2020

Ace opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan received a shoulder injury in the third ODI against Australia in Bengaluru recently that prevented him from coming out with the bat. He has been ruled out of India’s upcoming series against New Zealand and now reports have come out of him might failing to make it to the initial stages of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 as well.

This is the second time in seven months that injury has forced Dhawan to crash out of international cricket, the last time being in the ICC World Cup where he had broken his thumb while batting against Australia.

The 34-year-old dived while fielding in the fifth over of the match against Australia and hurt himself in the process. He walked off the field and could not come back again. India won the match by seven wickets as KL Rahul partnered centurion Rohit Sharma in the opening.

Dhawan, who returned to his old team Delhi Capitals (Delhi Daredevils then) in the IPL last year, will be out of action for at least 10 weeks and that makes his presence in the early part of the tournament, according to a report by TimesNow. Dhawan was instrumental in Capitals’ making the playoffs last year after seven years and the now, the Shreyas Iter-led franchise will have to find a solution to the massive problem they have in their hands.

Sanju Samson replaces Shikhar Dhawan in T20Is

While Sanju Samson replaced Dhawan for the five-T20I series against the Kiwis starting Friday, Prithvi Shaw was his replacement in the three-ODI series starting February 5. Shaw himself made a comeback to the national time after over a year, thanks to his 150 made against New Zealand ‘A’ recently.

Dhawan was among the runs in the recent months as he overcame his World Cup blow to make the XI. The southpaw has played in 34 Tests, 136 ODIs and 61 T20Is to make over 9,000 runs with 24 hundreds across formats. He made 74 and 96 in the two games that he played against Australia in the recent series after a 52 against Sri Lanka in the third T20I in Pune and would consider himself unlucky to have missed out following three consecutive fifties.

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