Rajasthan Royal coach on availability all-rounder player Ben Strokes.

Rajasthan Royals will begin their Indian Premier League ( IPL 2020) campaign in Sharjah on 22 September against Chennai Super Kings. While the plans were on in full swing, there is still a large piece of the jigsaw missing for the team.

Star all-rounder Ben Stokes, who in this campaign was supposed to play a significant role for the team, has still to join the team as he had to go to New Zealand to meet his sick father.

The Royals camp holds its fingers crossed about the availability of Stokes, but coach Andrew McDonald doesn’t want the situation to stay second-guessing.

“After all, thoughts with the Stokes family. It’s a challenging situation, but we give him as much time as he wants, and connect with him as best we can.

So yeah, we are not sure where Ben Stokesy is right now, but we can make our choices from there until it’s worked out. But I don’t want to second-guess what’s going to happen to him just yet, “McDonald said during an interview with ESPNCricinfo.

The other major international that RR has is Steven Smith from Australia, and he too was injured during England’s ongoing limited-overs series.

But McDonald said he was not preoccupied with injuries
“Steve Smith I think is a little better. He requires a bit of time, it was a short period between game one and two where the injury occurred, so I’d guess any residual side effects were on.

On the side of caution they’ll be erring, but hopefully [they’ll] see him playing again on Wednesday [for the 3 ODI against England in Manchester].

“You’ll have some moving pieces all over the tournament. There will be accidents, tiredness, and all kinds of stuff. But while there is talk about where Smudger and Stokesy are, we feel we have some decent coverage to play different ways.

“In terms of our left-hand batting we have added some depth, particularly in Yashashvi Jaiswal and Anuj Rawat among the home-grown players, so we think we have some options there.

We feel like we can arrange our side up to three or four different ways, as we set up at the auction, “he said.