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South Africa announce ODI Squad for Bangladesh series – 8 IPL bound players included

Quinton De Kock

South Africa will be playing an ODI series followed by a Test series at their home turf against Bangladesh starting from 18th March. The three ODI matches (on 18th March, 20th March and 23rd March respectively) will be followed by Two test matches (31st March to 4th April and 8th to 12th April). However, this poses a great threat to the Indian IPL franchises.

BCCI announced the final schedule of the 15th edition of the Indian Premier League, i.e, IPL 2021 a few days ago and it is officially confirmed now that the tournament will begin early this year. It is expected to start on 26th March this season and the league stage matches will go on till 22nd May. The playoffs schedule has not been decided yet. The first match on 26th March will be played between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders.

However, this is a problem as South Africa vs Bangladesh tour directly collides with the IPL schedule. Although Cricket South Africa had given full freedom to its players to play in the full length of the Indian Premier League this season, some of the players have decided to play at least the ODI series before joining their respective IPL franchises.

Thus, the South Africa ODI squad that has been announced for the series contains the names of 8 such players who will be playing in IPL 2022. They are Quinton de Kock, Rassie Van der Dussen, Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi and Dwaine Pretorius.

Let us take a look at South Africa’s squad first.

South Africa ODI Squad vs Bangladesh: Temba Bavuma (capt), Keshav Maharaj (vice-capt), Quinton de Kock (wk), Rassie van der Dussen, Kagiso Rabada, Zubayr Hamza, Marco Jansen, Janneman Malan, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Wayne Parnell, Andile Phehlukwayo, Dwaine Pretorius, Tabraiz Shamsi, Kyle Verreynne.

South Africa’s Test captain Dean Elgar has requested some of his IPL bound players to stay for the Test series as well and the players would have to decide that. However, if they were to take part in the Test series, the players would miss at least 2 weeks of action in the IPL.