IPL 2021: Adam Zampa will miss the season opener for RCB against MI

Aussie leg spinner Adam Zampa will miss the opening fixture of IPL 2021 against Mumbai Indians due to his marriage. RCB’s Director of Cricket Mike Hesson announced it via a video on RCB’s twitter page.

Zampa is set to marry his long time girlfriend Hattie Palmer in Australia and with COVID-19 protocols set in place – the leg spinner won’t be able to make it to India in time to be a part of Royal Challengers Bangalore from Match 1.

The leg spinner played 3 matches last season and picked just 2 wickets. His best performance came in the eliminator when he tightened screws on Sunrisers Hyderabad with bowling figures of 4-0-12-1. The 28 year old leg spinner played 14 IPL matches in his career and picked 21 wickets with a career best of 6/19 against SRH.

Royal Challengers Bangalore will take on Mumbai Indians at Chennai in the first match of IPL 2021 on April 9, 2021.

“We won’t have our full contingent of overseas players available for the first game. Adam Zampa is getting married. It’s an important time for him and it’s something that as a franchise we are aware of and we respect and we hope he has a great time. So when he joins us, once again he is going to be fresh and make a massive contribution to the rest of the tournament.” Hesson added.

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It is confirmed by Mike Hesson that overseas players AB de Villiers and Glenn Maxwell will arrive at different times until April 1 while the Indian contingent players will join the team a few days after the England ODIs. Hesson also said that head coach Simon Katich’s arrival has been delayed due to documentation issue in Australia.

COVID-19 Quarantine Rules:

All IPL players and support staff will have to be quarantined for 7 days and clear Covid-19 tests before they come together in the bio-secure bubble.

“The thing we noticed last year, when you are in the bio-bubble you don’t want to jam-pack everything into the first few days. You want to make sure your culture is quite organic and it’s something that develops and grows as we start to understand and respect that our players have been in bubbles potentially the last 6-8 months and have gone from bubble to bubble. We are making sure we are functioning and firing for the whole tournament and not just push guys for the first game,” Hesson expressed in Bold Diaries.