Faf du Plessis ruled out from remainder of CPL 2023 due to tennis elbow injury

After showcasing his batting might against the Barbados Royals and the Trinbago Knight Riders with knocks of 46 and 57 respectively, Faf du Plessis’ CPL campaign came to an abrupt halt after the former South African aggravated his long-term tennis elbow injury which will now need a surgery to be fixed.

Talking to Ian Bishop at the post-match presentation against the Knight Riders, Faf said, “Happy with the result, but obviously sad [that] I'm leaving at a crucial stage in the tournament when you feel like the team can start doing some really good things in the tournament. For me, the challenge with the elbow is I've played with it (tennis elbow) for almost two years; I've had eight cortisone injections into my elbow.”

He further added, “So I'm at a stage where the cortisone is not good for my body anymore, so that's why the operation is always the last resort. I didn't want to do it, but [have] time off now. I've got to basically go from here to get off the plane into the hospital to get the surgery done."

In a shocking revelation, Faf admitted that his tennis elbow dampened his power-hitting against Trinbago but he still managed to find a way against the Knight Riders, braving past their formidable bowling unit with a bedazzling display of strokes.

Faf said, “[During] the last while I did feel a little bit of loss of power - all because of the pain, which sometimes pulls the power back. So you just have to play a game where you feel like maybe hitting at 80% power, and [on] fields like this [which are] a little bit smaller, you can just time the ball. But yeah, really happy with the innings today.”

The RCB captain further added, “I think we needed that in the powerplay, especially in my experience playing here and against these guys [TKR] - they're a very strong powerplay attack. Akeal Hosein always does well, he gets one or two wickets upfront, and then they bowled really well. The fact that we could counterpunch that and get 50 after six [overs] was a great way to play off the front foot."