Stokes

Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL

Rajasthan Royals star all-rounder Ben Stokes seems to be closely following the ongoing IPL 2021. The 29-year-old returned home after sustaining an injury in the opening game of Rajasthan Royals against Punjab Kings. Apart from Stokes, RR is also with Jofra Archer and Liam Livingstone, who returned citing bubble fatigue.

The wickets are trash: Ben Stokes

In the match between Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings on Friday, both teams struggled to get to terms with the slow nature of the MA Chidambaram pitch. With the first leg of the tournament almost over, two venues have seen contrasting result on the scoreboard. Where Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium has produced some high scoring matches, the Chepauk pitch has been equally tough. Seeing this, Ben Stokes said that an IPL match must witness scores around 160/170 and not 130/140. He also hoped the tracks won’t get worse going deep into the tournament.

Read the tweet here:

Stokes joins David Warner to criticise the pitch

However, Ben Stokes is not the first player to say about the Chepauk pitch, earlier Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner had also called the pitch ‘shocking’ but said that the pitch curators do not have much time in between matches to prepare a good wicket. Due to the pandemic that has engulfed the nation, IPL, for the first time is following a caravan schedule with set numbers of matches being played at a single venue, in clusters. Chennai has so far hosted nine games out of the 17 matches played.