A concussion has ruled Faf du Plessis out of the Quetta Gladiators' ongoing match against the Peshawar Zalmi in Abu Dhabi. du Plessis suffered a blow to the head when he collided with his team-mate Mohammad Hasnain during the seventh over of the Zalmi innings. He was replaced in the XI by Saim Ayub.
The collision took place when David Miller drove Mohammad Nawaz down the ground, between du Plessis at long-on and Hasnain at long-off. Both fielders converged at speed, with Hasnain making a late attempt to evade a collision as du Plessis dived to his right to stop the ball. Hasnain couldn't quite pull away, however, and du Plessis' head crashed into his knee.
du Plessis lay prone on the ground for a few minutes while the Gladiators physio attended to him, but eventually got on his feet to walk back into his team's dugout. The Gladiators' management said soon after that he was being taken to hospital.
Ayub, the 19-year-old left-hand batter, played five T20 games, all of them during the early stages of PSL 2021, before the tournament was suspended due to a growing number of Covid-19 cases among its participants.
The Gladiators are using a concussion substitute for the second successive match. During their last match against the Islamabad United, allrounder Andre Russell took a blow to his helmet from a Mohammad Musa bouncer. He was replaced by the fast bowler Naseem Shah. Russell was not available for selection for Saturday's match against Zalmi.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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