Major Update On Josh Hazlewood Ahead Of RCB's IPL 2025 Restart: "Recovering From..."

Royal Challengers Bengaluru director Mo Bobat said skipper Rajat Patidar has been recuperating really fast from his finger injury, and the swelling has gone down considerably. Patidar batted in the nets on Thursday and Friday without wearing the protective splint, raising hopes of his availability for the match against Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday. "Rajat's going well. He had an injury to his hand, but he's been building up ever so slowly. For him, probably the disruption (halting of IPL because of Indo-Pak border tension) gave a few more days to get through that early healing, for the swelling to go down, and for him to get used to picking up a bat again.

"He's practised the last few days and he's going well," said Bobat in the pre-match press meet here.

Patidar had suffered the injury during RCB's home game against Chennai Super Kings a few days back.

Pacer Josh Hazlewood, who is nursing a shoulder injury, has not rejoined the RCB and Bobat said the team is having conversations with Cricket Australia for updates.

"Josh is our only player not here at the moment. He's recovering from his shoulder niggle that he had. He's doing that with Cricket Australia.

"Our medical team and their medical teams have been liaising on what that detail looks like and he's just taking that day by day," he said.

The rescheduling of IPL has thrown a spanner in the strategising part of teams in terms of player availability. RCB will lose Jacob Bethel and Lungi Ngidi soon because of their national commitments, and Bobat said they have enough time to think about replacements.

"I'm sure all the teams experienced the same thing. Once your players have gone home and once the dates have been extended, that creates a bit of uncertainty. We