Ponting rues lack of replacements for Glenn Maxwell, Lockie Ferguson: ‘With PSL going on, there’s not a lot of quality…'

PBKS have received a massive blow, with skipper Shreyas Iyer confirmed during toss on Wednesday that Glenn Maxwell has sustained a fractured finger injury, and is set to miss the remaining IPL 2025 games. Iyer also reiterated that PBKS haven’t decided on Maxwell’s replacement yet. “It's very unfortunate that he's got a fractured finger,” Iyer said.

“To be honest, we haven't decided about the replacements yet so far but we are pretty strong in our team's mindset and what we have outside of our playing XI. We've got varieties of players who can win you matches. So we're going to stick to that as much as possible,” he added.

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It was also confirmed by Maxwell’s PBKS and Australia teammate Marcus Stoinis, who revealed that he broke his finger at training just before the rained-out fixture vs KKR on April 26.

Before the match vs CSK on Wednesday, Stoinis said, “He didn't think it was too bad, but it ended up getting pretty bad. He had scans and, yeah, the results weren't great. So unfortunately for Maxi, I think it's likely he's out for the tournament.”

Ricky Ponting blames PSL 2025 for delay in replacements

In April, PBKS also lost pacer Lockie Ferguson to injury, and his replacement also hasn’t been named yet. PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting confirmed, “We will be signing some replacements at some stage.”

“We've got until our 12th game, so we have a couple of games to go yet. With the squad we've got, we're trying to find players in our squad anyway, we've got most basis covered. So we've got Azmatullah [Omarzai], Aaron Hardie, who hasn't played yet, Xavier Bartlett who didn't play today, it's conditions based. But when we get to Dharamsala he will come back into the reckoning up there, where the ball might swing and bounce a little bit more.”

Ponting also blamed the ongoing PSL 2025 in Pakistan for PBKS lack of interest in looking for replacements currently.

“So we've actually been a little bit patient. Maxi's only been a couple of days, Lockie's has been two or three weeks. And with the PSL happening at the same time, there's not a lot of high-quality replacements out there, to be honest. So we've just been patient. We're having a look around at Indian talent as well and we're looking at what roles we might be able to fill with some younger Indian players. We'll actually take a couple of guys to Dharamsala with us, a couple of guys trained with us yesterday and they will come with us to Dharamsala, we'll have a closer look at them and they might find themselves with a Punjab contract going forward. It has to be this week, has to be before the 12th game, so stay tuned,” he said.

PBKS have almost a week to select their replacements, and their 11th fixture vs LSG is scheduled for May 4. Meanwhile ther 12th game is vs DC on May 8, and both fixtures will take place in Dharamshala.