Injured Maxwell in danger of missing rest of IPL; Ponting says 'stay tuned' for replacements

Punjab Kings (PBKS) allrounder Glenn Maxwell has suffered a fractured finger in his right hand and is in danger of missing the remainder of IPL 2025. While PBKS captain Shreyas Iyer said at the toss during the match against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) that they hadn't "decided about the replacements yet," head coach Ricky Ponting said in the press conference later that they would do so soon.

Maxwell's PBKS and Australia team-mate Marcus Stoinis also confirmed Maxwell had broken his finger at training before the rained-out encounter against Kolkata Knight Riders on April 26, saying Maxwell is "likely out of the tournament".

In Maxwell's absence for the match against CSK, PBKS brought in Suryansh Shedge and named only three overseas players in their XI after opting to bowl, and went on to win the game by four wickets.

"It's very unfortunate that he's got a fractured finger," Shreyas said at the toss. "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."

Stoinis also confirmed Maxwell had gone for scans and the results "weren't great."

"He didn't think it was too bad, but it ended up getting pretty bad," Stoinis told the broadcasters before the match in Chennai. "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."

Maxwell has endured a poor run in the tournament so far with the bat but has contributed with his offspin, taking four wickets. He has 48 runs in six innings, including single-digit scores in each of his last four games. In the last match against KKR, he scored 7 off eight balls before being bowled by Varun Chakravarthy. He was bought for INR 4.2 crore at the 2025 mega auction.

Maxwell's injury means he will likely be the second player PBKS will be without after their fast bowler Lockie Ferguson had sustained a "serious injury " earlier this month. PBKS have, however, not named a replacement for him yet, but Ponting said they will do so soon.

"We will be signing some replacements at some stage," Ponting said. "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.

"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."

As Ponting said, they have to name the replacements before their 12th game. They have almost a week to name the replacements, with their 11th game against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) on May 4 and 12th match against Delhi Capitals (DC) on May 8; both those matches will be in Dharamsala.

PBKS are currently placed second on the points table, only behind Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). CSK is the only team right now that has been eliminated from the playoffs race.