South Africa has become the second team to use the exit door of the ongoing ICC World Cup campaign. After losing its last match to Pakistan by 49 runs on Sunday at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the team captain Faf du Plessis started playing the blame game. SA skipper du Plessis blamed the Indian Premier League (IPL) for his team’s poor performance.
He said that his team was not fresh when they came to the World Cup, especially his ace player Kagiso Rabada. At a press conference, du Plessis said, “So I don’t think it’s not necessarily just the IPL, but it was important for a few guys to rest; and the fact that they didn’t mean that they — you know, they came into the tournament not fresh. That’s not an excuse; that’s just a fact. And KG (Kagiso Rabada) is — you can see that his pace is probably a little bit down from where he normally is.”
He further added that he tried to stop Rabada from playing the IPL.
However, people did not like the South African captain’s statement and pointed out that he also played in IPL with Chennai Super Kings. He was in the game till the very end as his team went to the finals.
Twitterians slammed and trolled du Plessis for blaming IPL for his own mistake as he himself was a part of the IPL. People even pointed out that other players also played the IPL but they are performing well.
Here are the best replies from Twitter users to Faf du Plessis’ statement:
#1
Dear @faf1307
This is a commonsense reminder to u
Most of all Indian team player, Even Willimson, Smith, Warner were busy with IPL, but they are doing good at worldcup too #WorldCup2019
Don't blame only to RABADA…Blame yourself first…Then team https://t.co/dKdn9J9FqL
— Jagadish Hansa (@jagadishexplore) June 24, 2019
#2
LOL!!
Faf du Plessis was right there in IPL till the end. He played the final match. Why didn't he opt to leave IPL to stay 'Fresh' for #CWC19 ??? 😂😂@faf1307
— Piyush Shahi🇮🇳 (@Piyushkshahi) June 24, 2019
#3
Bumrah played the whole season, find some better excuses @OfficialCSA @faf1307
— Rishabh Sharma (@rishabhnannu) June 24, 2019
#4
Faf Du Plessis has been blaming ipl for each players performance. Conveniently forgetting that he played the entire ipl. This time it is purely a leadership failure. They did not even get to the point where they normally start choking.
— Sachin Girishkumar (@sachin_gk) June 24, 2019
#5
Faf du Plessis had blamed IPL for Dale Steyn's injury, which was somewhat true. But now he blames IPL for Kagiso Rabada's mundane performance. This is lame from SA captain. Rabada was bowling only four overs per match in the IPL. #CWC19 #PAKvSA
— Gautam Chauhan🏏 (@Gautamchauhan2) June 24, 2019
#6
Faf du Plessis: "We are out of #CWC19 because of IPL."
RaGa: "We lost #LokSabhaElections2019 because of EVM."#SameThing
— Siddharth Chhaya – સિદ્ધાર્થ છાયા 🇮🇳 (@siddtalks) June 24, 2019
#7
https://twitter.com/Cena87/status/1143069981619318784
#8
Bumrah also played IPL
— Real McCoy (@MeastoehMoyo) June 24, 2019
#9
Then y faf played IPL?? He also can take rest and get fresh for worldcup😏. If he did that, who knows rabada can do the same then SA played well and reach the final, then go home with cup 🙇if you need that then u may take tough decisions faf..
— Balaji (@Critique__X) June 24, 2019
#10
When Faf himself played IPL, how can he ask any other player to not participate in it?
Bumrah, bhuvneshwar, shami, bolt, malinga, russel, stonis etc played.
Blaming #IPL2019 isn't the solution.
Its just shifting blames.— Gaurav Jain (@lazysethji) June 24, 2019
#11
https://twitter.com/Santanu77380983/status/1143089272464924674
#12
https://twitter.com/raystilinski/status/1143066007075844096
#13
Excuses excuses hold that L @faf1307
— mb (@mmambh) June 24, 2019