Tim David set to become first Singapore international cricketer to play in IPL

NEW DELHI: The second phase of the 14th edition of IPL will feature a Singapore cricketer for the first time as

Royal Challengers Bangalore

have roped in freelance T20 sensation Tim David, who has made a name for himself across leagues in the world.

While he is of Australian descent, the 6 feet 5 inch tall David currently plays international cricket for Singapore and he brings with him a novelty factor in Virat Kohli's team.

Since ICC has accorded T20 International status to all its 106 member nations, David has played 14 T20 Internationals with 558 runs in his kitty at a strike rate of 158 plus.

Overall, he has played 49 T20 games, factoring in his appearances in the

BBL

and PSL with a tally of 1171 runs at a strike rate of 155 plus.

In BBL, he has played for

Hobart Hurricanes

and

Perth Scorchers

while he had recently scored two List A hundreds in the

Royal London Cup

for Surrey, including a career-best 140 against Warwickshire.

In fact, the 25-year-old David's father Rod David is also an ex-Singapore international and represented the country in the 1997 ICC World Cup qualifier, a tournament that was won by Bangladesh.

While David by birth became a Singapore passport holder, the family migrated back to Australia and he grew up in Perth. His father apart from being an ex Singapore international is also an engineer.

It is expected that AB de Villiers and Kyle Jamieson will be certainties in RCB's playing XI while Dan Christian also has a good chance of making it. However Kohli will not be able to ignore that David has already hit 77 sixes in senor level competitive 64-white ball games including T20 and List A.

David however is not the first cricketer from an associate nation to play in the IPL as Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate and Dirk Nannes (who also played for Australia) have played for IPL franchise.

The remainder of the IPL-14 will begin on September 19 in the UAE.