IPL 2022: HUGE blow for Gujarat Titans as THIS player pulls out of T20 league

This is the second time Jason Roy has decided to not to play the IPL after finding a team at the auction. In 2020, Delhi Capitals picked up Roy for his then base price of Rs 1.5 crore but he opted out for personal reasons.

Newcomers Gujarat Titans were dealt a huge blow just weeks ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 with England opener Jason Roy deciding to pull out of the tournament. Roy, who was signed for Rs 2 crore at the IPL 2022 mega auction, was the only specialist opener picked by the Titans apart from Shubman Gill.

According to ESPNcricinfo website, the Titans are yet to finalise a replacement for Roy, who cited bio-bubble fatigue as the reason. The Englishman was recently seen in action at the Pakistan Super League (PSL) 2022 and was the leading run-scorer for the Quetta Gladiators – scoring 303 runs at an average o 50.5 with a strike-rate of 170.22 with one hundred and two fifties.

This is the second time Roy has decided to not to play the IPL after finding a team at the auction. In 2020, Delhi Capitals picked up Roy for his then base price of Rs 1.5 crore but he opted out for personal reasons. The IPL 2022 will be a 10-team event and will take place in Mumbai and Pune during the league phase. Teams will operate out of a bubble through the season, although the IPL is yet to share the guidelines and protocols with the franchises.

If Roy were to be in the bubble throughout the IPL 2022, he would probably need to be away from his family, which includes his second child who was born in January, for more than two months, with the tournament set to begin on March 26 and end with the final on May 29.

The Titans would have been the fourth franchise Roy would have played for in the IPL, having earlier represented Gujarat Lions (2017), Delhi Daredevils (2018) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (2021). He went unsold at the 2021 auction but was drafted in as a replacement for the Australia allrounder Mitchell Marsh. Roy has scored 329 runs in 13 IPL matches at an average of 29.90 and a strike rate of 129.01, including two half-centuries, which came in his respective team debuts for the Daredevils and the Sunrisers.