Rajasthan Royals suffered a huge blow as their star batter Jos Buttler got several stitches on the little finger of his left hand while playing against Punjab Kings in the IPL 2023 match on Wednesday.
The injury can rule him out of the next game where Rajasthan will be locking horns against Delhi Capitals on Saturday. The incident transpired when Buttler sprinted from deep and grabbed a sliding catch off Jason Holder’s bowling to dismiss Punjab Kings’ Shahrukh Khan and that is when he injured his fingers.
As a result, Rajasthan’s management sent Ravichandran Ashwin to open the innings alongside Jaiswal. However, Buttler came to bat but could only score 19 runs and the Royals lost the match by five runs. Earlier, Royal’s skipper Sanju Samson also disclosed why they sent Ashwin to open the innings instead of Buttler.
“Buttler had a small injury, which happened during fielding. The physio didn’t have enough time to do his stitches. So, the idea was to send Ashwin bhai and to hold everyone back. He [Buttler] is fine…he had his stitches, batted well and should be fine,” explained Samson during the post-match conference.
“In games like these, momentums shift away from you pretty quickly. We started off very well. In the middle, we were expecting to get boundaries here and there. But we couldn’t and that’s where we lost it. Even after that, we did well to get close to the target. With a couple of boundaries here and there, we could have [won],” said Samson.
As per the PTI, Buttler also won the award for the best catch and he also came to take his cheque with a strap on his little finger. It was because of a sore finger, Royal's medical team will probably look to give him some rest for a game or two.