In a crushing blow to Rajasthan, their pacer Nathan Coulter-Nile has been ruled out of the ongoing 15th season. The pacer got injured during the game against Hyderabad. In that game, he came to bowl the last over of the match. However, while bowling the first ball of the over, the right-arm pacer fell down, and bowled a waist-high no-ball.
It was a no-ball and thus, a free hit was called. On the other hand, Coulter-Nile was seen holding his knee in pain. The Western Australia-born player was taken for medical help and the over was bowled by Riyan Parag. The 34-year-old missed out on the games against Mumbai and Bangalore respectively. Pacer Navdeep Saini has played in those two games.
This isn’t the first time that he has missed out on the cash-rich league due to injuries. While being part of Bangalore in seasons 2018 and 2019, he was ruled out of those seasons due to injuries. Subsequently, he was released by the team ahead of the 2020 player auction. The bowling all-rounder from Osborne Park was picked by Mumbai in 2020 and played for the team till last season.
This year, he was bought by Rajasthan to bolster their bowling line-up alongside the likes of Trent Boult, Prasidh Krishna, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Yuzvendra Chahal. The bowling line-up has done well in the three games played so far. In their first game against Hyderabad, the team defended the target of 211 while restricting the opposition to 149/7.
In their next game against Mumbai, the team defended the target of 194 by restricting the five-time winners to 170/9. On April 5 against Bangalore, the former had picked five wickets for 87 defending 170. However, the game was won by Bangalore, thanks to Dinesh Karthik and Shahbaz Ahmed
