Rajasthan Royals (RR) have joined the ranks of teams making a late-season signing, which is for the 12th game of the IPL 2025. The player signed by them is Lhuan-dre Pretorius of South Africa, and he is there to replace batter Nitish Rana. On Thursday, May 8, the Indian Premier League (IPL) announced the replacement in a statement. Minimum price of Rs 30 lakh, 19-year-old Lhuan-dre has committed to RR.
Nitish Rana was not a part of the previous IPL 2025 game of the Rajasthan Royals against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), which took place at Eden Gardens. RR for that match arranged a local player, Kunal Singh Rathore.
The new replacement of the team, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, is renowned for his batting as well as wicket-keeping skills, although the 19-year-old cricketer has not yet appeared at the senior international level cricket for South Africa. However, he still left a remark in the SA20 2024-25 season, where he had a strike rate of more than 160 by scoring 397 runs.
The young talent has been signed by the Rajasthan Royals as the team plans for a comeback next year, as for this season, the team is already out of the race for the playoffs. Following the rule change in IPL 2025, more teams have indicated they are prepared to sign replacement players, just as Vaibhav Suryavanshi. Teams could only bring in replacements until they played their seventh game of the season in earlier years. Still, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has extended this deadline till the end of the 12th game. Franchises could also extend substitute players’ contracts into the following season.
Moreover, they keep the option to keep the originally contracted player so long as he or she fits the overall needed purse and the rules governing domestic and foreign players. Teams might also extend substitute players’ contracts into the following season.
