IPL 2022: Moeen Ali will be out of action for seven days, confirms Stephen Fleming

Chennai Super Kings’ has been hit by another injury blow as their all-rounder Moeen Ali suffered an ankle injury on Saturday while training.

Ali missed the Monday match against Punjab Kings at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, and the team’s head coach Stephen Fleming has confirmed the England all-rounder will miss seven days of action, which means he could be ruled out for the next 2-3 games.

However, thankfully for CSK, scans have revealed there is no fracture, and Fleming expects the all-rounder to recover soon. CSK has had injury woes in the ongoing season as Deepak Chahar and Adam Milne have been ruled out of the entire season due to their respective injuries.

Meanwhile, Ali hasn’t had a great season for the defending champions as he has scored only 87 runs in five matches for the Ravindra Jadeja-led team.

“He rolled his ankle. X-Rays revealed there was no fracture but there is always a recovery period, maybe seven days. We are hopeful the recovery will be quick given that there is no fracture,” Fleming said at the post-match press conference on Monday.

On the other hand, Ambati Rayudu suffered a hand injury while fielding against Punjab Kings on Monday and didn’t field at all after taking a blow to his wrist. However, despite the pain, Rayudu scored a fine knock of 78 runs off just 39 balls to keep his team in the contest.

“The first check was around the break and his hand was bruising. It was just a case of icing that and getting that down and I think a little padding around the glove. It was the same hand that was broken sometime back, so it’s still pretty tender and a knock like that can obviously cause some damage,” Fleming said.

Meanwhile, CSK captain Ravindra Jadeja couldn’t add the finishing touches as he scored 21 runs from 16 balls. In fact, MS Dhoni had played a fine cameo of 13-ball 28 against MI in the previous match and he could have batted ahead of Ravindra Jadeja. However, Fleming defended the decision of sending Jadeja ahead of the former skipper.

“We lost the wicket in the 12th (13th) over, pretty close to when we’ve seen MS Dhoni come in in the last 13 years, but today it was in the 12th over. We had this discussion a lot, MS’ best time is from about 15 overs onwards and Jadeja has played some good innings for us from the stage, and we don’t throw that out based on 1-2 games.”

CSK will play their next match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday at the MCA, Pune.