Klaasen pulls out of CPL 2024 for family reasons

Heinrich Klaasen will not be taking part in the 2024 season of the Caribbean Premier League, which begins on Thursday, due to a family emergency. The South African middle-order batter is one of the world’s best power-hitters, especially against slow bowling and is a significant loss for St Lucia Kings, who had signed him up, in June ahead of the CPL draft.

Kings, who made it to the Eliminator after finishing third on the points table last season, have replaced Klaasen with New Zealand top-order batter Tim Seifert, who has previously played for Trinbago Knight Riders and won the title with them in 2020.

Klaasen was part of the Guyana Amazon Warriors team in 2022, but that was before he came into his own as a limited-overs cricketer. He made 118 runs in five matches at a strike rate of 137. In the two years since then, he has played 82 T20s for both club and country, scoring 2293 runs at a strike rate of 169, including two hundreds and 16 fifties.

There were personnel changes in other teams as well with Knight Riders bringing USA’s Andries Gous on board as a temporary replacement. The 30-year-old wicketkeeper-batter impressed as the seventh-highest scorer at the T20 World Cup earlier this year and will sub in for Australia’s Tim David, who is expected to join Knight Riders only after their first four matches of the season.

Barbados Royals needed short-term cover as well with David Miller and Keshav Maharaj due to miss the first two matches to attend the Cricket South Africa awards function on September 5. They’ve brought in Sri Lanka allrounder Dunith Wellalage, who was a standout performer in the recent ODI series against India, and Shamarh Brooks.

Sikandar Raza has pulled out of the CPL as well with an injury. The Zimbabwe allrounder tweeted that he would be missing the entire tournament. St Kitts and Nevis Patriots are yet to name a replacement. For more details on the CPL squads for the 2024 tournament, click here.