South African-born player Carmi le Roux took a heavy hit during the match between San Francisco Unicorns and Seattle Orcas in the Major League Cricket (MLC) 2024. The match between the two teams took place at Church Street Park in Morrisville, North Carolina on Wednesday (July 17).
The incident occurred during the fourth ball of the second over when Carmi le Roux was bowling towards Ryan Rickelton. The fast bowler was in good rhythm and bowled impeccable lines and lengths, not allowing the batsmen to free their arms in the chase of 166.
Carmi le Roux threw a full ball out of the off that batter Ryan Rickelton returned to the pitcher. The ball hit him square in the face as it came in hard. He had no chance to save himself as the ball hit him and went into the middle of the field. The player was on the ground and in some pain.
With the blow he received, Carmi le Roux was not fit to bowl. He then walked off the field and appeared to be in immense pain. The fast bowler was replaced by captain Corey Anderson, who completed the over.
Here is the video:
After that, Carmi le Roux did not return to the field. He bowled 1.4 overs in the game and gave away 11 runs. But his absence was not felt much as the San Francisco Unicorns bowlers bowled well and did not let the Seattle Orcas batsmen settle in. They took wickets at regular intervals and sealed the game.
Liam Plunkett was the star player with his figures of 3/26. Along with him, Matthew Short, Corey Anderson and Pat Cummins got one wicket each. They restricted the opposition to a total of 142/6 and won the match by a margin of 23 runs to secure two important points.
For Seattle Orcas, Shehan Jayasuriya was the only batsman who looked stable at the crease. The opening batsman scored 54 runs off 37 balls. He batted at a strike rate of over 145 and also hit 7 fours and 2 sixes. Ryan Rickelton (29) was the second highest scorer while the rest of the batsmen failed to go past the 16-run mark.
The boys did a great job – Corey Anderson, captain of the San Francisco Unicorns
San Francisco Unicorns captain Corey Anderson spoke about the win and admitted that his team put in a great effort at the end. He praised youngsters Krishnamurthi and Pat Cummins for their performances. In the post-match presentation, he spoke about the win and explained:
“A pretty good result. The boys did a great job in the latter part of the batting innings and then came out strong with the ball. (On Krishnamurthi) He’s a young lad who’s got a lot of talent. Big pluses for him today. It was a pretty important innings in the context of the game. Odds of 20 in a game like this is huge.
“(On Cummins) He’s a world-class player, just having him in the group talking about cricket calms the group down. It’s also great for the balance of the team. We want to try to win every game, we go back to Dallas and we want to reassess quickly and hopefully we can get some momentum out of this one,” he concluded.
