Faf du Plessis opens up on a serious injury that made him give up rugby and take up cricket seriously

When Virat Kohli stepped down as RCB captain, there was quite a buzz around who would be the next in line to come in as the successor. Donning the RCB captain’s armband came with a huge responsibility and not everyone was equipped to pull that off. However, when RCB successfully landed the final bid on the opening day of the IPL 2022 auction for Faf du Plessis, it was pretty much written in stone.

It took a few days for RCB to make the decision of making Faf captain and in his very first edition of the IPL, he led from the front by top-scoring for the franchise and taking the team into the playoffs. 

Faf is one of those rare cricketers who have married fitness with their cricket skills and he continues to be a burning example of what being at the peak of fitness can do to the best of athletes.

Explaining how rugby helped him attain this high level of fitness, he spoke at length on the latest episode of RCB Bold Diaries Season 2. When asked whether he resented rugby for the sport being forced onto him, he said, “I never resent the game. I used it as a means to attain my fitness for cricket. The other sports that I played were just a means of being busy, doing as much as I could. I don’t know what it’s like in India but there are terms in South Africa when you play cricket. You don’t play it all year round.”

He continued, “In South Africa, serious sporting schools played for 60% or 70% of the year but the other schools played cricket for only 30% of the year. So, I had to do other sports just to keep me fit but I remember when I was 17, I remember that is when I made the call that I don’t want to do this for fitness anymore. I just want to focus on cricket.”

Faf broke out to his friends, stating, “Guys, I am not playing this anymore. I am retiring from rugby. They were like okay cool but a month later, there was this casual game that all my mates were playing. They requested me to play this game as it will be fun playing against another school’s first team. We will just put our third or fourth team but it was more like a social game. That was the last game I played.”

He also gave away the reason for his retirement from rugby, stating, “I stopped playing rugby because I didn’t want to get injured. My cricket season was around. I was using my school to set my stuff up to afford to become a professional. Now in the last game I played, there was this guy who dunked me over his shoulders. I fell backwards and broke my wrist. My dad was big on never showing pain. There was another incident when I was 12 and there was a guy who grabbed me by the collar, slingshot me and threw me onto the ground and I rattled my collarbone. I was obviously crying. My dad was the teacher at the school. He was like ‘stop crying, get on with this.’”

The RCB skipper continued, “By the time I finished the game, it was massively swollen. The doctor told me that your wrist was very badly broken and you will need to have two screws inserted into your wrist. I ended up missing three months because of this one stupid game that I never wanted to play. I ended up missing the cricket season. That was the first time I dealt with the injury side of the sport. I was missing games, I was frustrated and most importantly the next year was when I intended on becoming a pro. However, I was lucky to return for the rest of the season with a quick recovery. The following year, Pretoria offered me that contract that I was looking for.”