Watch: Ryan Rickelton’s ferocious shot leaves Carmi le Roux bleeding from head injury

South Africa-born pacer Carmi le Roux was on the receiving end of a nasty blow during the game between San Fransico Unicorns and the Seattle Orcas in the Major League Cricket (MLC) 2024. The match between the two teams took place at Church Street Park in Morrisville, North Carolina on Wednesday (17th July).

The incident took place during the 4th ball of the second over when Carmi le Roux was bowling to Ryan Rickelton. The fast bowler looked in good rhythm and bowled impeccable lines and lengths, not allowing the batters to free their arms in the chase of 166.

Carmi le Roux bowled a full delivery outside off to which batter Ryan Rickelton drove it back to the bowler. The ball hit him straight in the face as it came hard. He had no chance to save himself as the ball hit him and went onto towards mid-on. The pacer was down and in a bit of pain.

With the blow that he faced, Carmi le Roux wasn't in a position to bowl. He then walked off the field and he looked in immense pain. The fast bowler then was replaced by skipper Corey Anderson, who completed the over.

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Carmi le Roux after that didn't return to the field. He bowled 1.4 overs in the game and gave away 11 runs. But his absence wasn't felt much as the San Francisco Unicorns bowlers bowled well and didn't let the Seattle Orcas batters settle. They picked wickets at regular intervals and sealed the game.

Liam Plunkett was the pick of the bowlers with his figures of 3/26. Along with him, Matthew Short, Corey Anderson, and Pat Cummins picked one wicket each. They restricted the opposition to a total of 142/6 and won the game by the margin of 23 runs to get important two points under their belt.

For Seattle Orcas, Shehan Jayasuriya was the only batter who looked settled at the crease. The opening batter scored 54 runs off 37 balls. He batted with a strike rate of over 145 and also slammed 7 fours and 2 sixes. Ryan Rickelton (29) was the second-highest scorer while the rest of the batters failed to get past the 16-run mark.

The boys did a great job - San Fransico Unicorns skipper Corey Anderson

San Fransico Unicorns skipper Corey Anderson talked about the win and admitted that it was a strong effort at the end from his team. He lauded young Krishnamurthi and Pat Cummins for their performances. Elaborating on the win after the game in the post-match presentation, he explained:

"Pretty good result. The boys did a great job in the back end of the batting innings and then came out strong with the ball. (On Krishnamurthi) He's a young kid who's got so much talent. Huge pluses for him today. It was a pretty big innings in the context of the game. 20 odds in a game like this is huge.

"(On Cummins )He is a world-class player, just having him in the group speaking cricket calms the group. Great for the balance of the team as well. We want to try and win every game, we go back to Dallas and we want to reassess quickly and hopefully, we can get a bit of momentum out of this one," he concluded.