It is understood that Cummins will join SRH in Hyderabad on March 23 after getting the clearance from Cricket Australia to travel to the IPL. The development comes ten days before the IPL starts, with defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) facing SRH at the M Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru on March 28.
Incidentally, this will be the first time in the IPL that Indian players will captain all 10 teams – until Cummins returns to take charge at SRH. As of now there is no clear date marked for when Cummins would start playing in IPL but the assumption withing the franchise is he is likely to miss at least the first few matches
Cummins has been battling a lumbar stress issue in his back for some time now, and the injury restricted him to just one match in Australia’s home season: the third Test against England in mid-December in Adelaide, where he took six wickets in 34 overs across two innings to help Australia go 3-0 up and retain the Ashes.
Both Kishan and Abhishek played key roles India’s victory at the 2026 T20 World Cup. Neither has led an IPL team before.
SRH signed Kishan for INR 11.25 crore ahead of the IPL 2025 auction. The wicketkeeper-batter scored 354 runs at a strike rate of 152.58 in his first season at the franchise, including an unbeaten century on his debut for the team and a 94* towards the end of the season.
He comes into IPL 2026 on the back of a sensational comeback into India’s T20I set-up after he led Jharkhand to victory in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy by topping the tournament run-charts.
Since his international return at the start of the year, Kishan has scored 532 runs in 13 T20Is at an average of 40.92 and a strike rate of 207.00, including three half-centuries at the World Cup. Both Kishan and Abhishek, who had a quieter tournament overall, scored fifties in the final against New Zealand in Ahmedabad.
