Big Blow For Mumbai Indians! Star Off-Spinner Ruled Out Of IPL 2025 Due To Vertebra Fracture

In what might come as a huge blow to five-time champions Mumbai Indians' aspirations of putting up a better performance than IPL 2024, Afghanistan's teenage spinner Allah Ghazanfar has been ruled out of the tournament due to a vertebra fracture. He has been ruled out of the Champions Trophy as well and has been replaced by Nangeyalia Kharote.

The Afghanistan Cricket Board, which tweeted out the news on Wednesday morning, said that Ghazanfar sustained the injury during the tour of Zimbabwe in 2024, will be sidelined for a minimum of four months and will remain under treatment during this period.

IPL 2025 is expected to begin on March 21 and the ACB statement implies that Ghazanfar will only be back in action in June, which rules him out of the season. The Mumbai contract was the teenager's first in IPL.

Ghazanfar, who has 21 wickets from 11 ODIs till now, played three matches for the MI Emirates in UAE's ILT20 league last month after the tour of Zimbabwe, which might have aggravated the injury. He was not as effective as the Emirates would have hoped him to be, though, bowling around eight overs in those three matches and picking up only one wicket.

Ghazanfar's introduction to the cash-rich league came during IPL 2024 when he was signed by the Kolkata Knight Riders as a replacement for compatriot Mujeeb ur Rahman. A brilliant year resulted in him being named in ICC's ODI Team of the Year.

A smart off-spin bowling allrounder, Ghazanfar came into the IPL 2025 mega auction at a base price of Rs 75 lakh and after a battle with Kolkata, Mumbai bagged his services for Rs 4.8 crore.

In Ghazanfar's absence, Mumbai are left with Will Jacks, Mitchell Santner, Kerala's Vignesh Puthur and Karn Sharma in the spin department.

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