[Tex/LaTex] Citation ‘et al.’ in overleaf

Question

I have written a document with Overleaf for IEEE Transactions. I have almost completed it but I would like to cite as 'Richard et al. [1]' with et al in italics.

Right now I have been writing it manually which of course is not in italics. I am already done with bibliography. Do I need to change the command i.e. \cite{} or to add some package.

The MWE is:

\documentclass[journal,twoside]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{cite}
\begin{document}
Richard et al. \cite{CRreliability} gives a detailed study about the reliability of wireless networks.
\begin{thebibliography}{99}
\bibitem{CRreliability}
A. Richard, B.C. Christopher, E. Williams, "Reliability of wireless networks", \textit{ABC Communications \& Networks IEEE}, vol. XX, no. 2, pp. XXX-XXX, 20XX. 
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Is it fine if I just use \textit{et al.}, I just tried it and it helped.