Rising Pune Supergiants have signed Australian star George Bailey as the replacement for Faf du Plessis. RPSG has lost 4 overseas players due to injury.
Kevin Pietersen, Faf du Plessis, Mitchell Marsh and Steve Smith were the players to be ruled out of the IPL due to injuries. Rising Pune Supergiants have won only 2 games out of their 8 matches.
“Smith’s [news] been a bummer. He was just coming into his own and this happened,” Raghu Iyer, chief executive at Supergiants, said. “It is a challenging time. Before we could settle down we lost the core group of players around whom you build a team around.”
Iyer said,“We lost four crucial players, but we are looking ahead. Bailey has tremendous experience and had a very successful season before last. He can contribute to the leadership group,” Iyer said. In 34 IPL games, Bailey has 579 runs at 25.17, with a strike rate 129.82.
RPS named Usman Khawaja as a replacement for Kevin Pietersen. The replacements for Mitchell Marsh and Steve Smith are yet to be named.
George Bailey played for Kings XI Punjab in the last two seasons of IPL. Bailey led the Kings XI Punjab side to the finals in the IPL 7.