Kishan to lead Sunrisers Hyderabad in Cummins' absence

Cummins, who is recuperating from a lumbar stress issue, is set to miss the early part of the season

Nagraj Gollapudi

Published: Mar 18, 2026, 11:44 AM (3 hrs ago)

Ishan Kishan will lead Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the early part of IPL 2026. ESPNcricinfo has learned that the franchise has decided to appoint Kishan as interim captain with Pat Cummins recuperating from the lumbar stress issue that ruled him out of Australia's T20 World Cup campaign.

Abhishek Sharma will serve as Kishan's deputy.

It is understood that Cummins will join SRH in Hyderabad on March 23 after getting the clearance from Cricket Australia [CA] 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.

This will only be the second season when all ten teams start with Indian captains - until Cummins returns to take charge at SRH. In 2019, SRH was the only side with an overseas captain but Bhuvneshwar Kumar stood in for Kane Williamson in their first match of the season. As of now, there is no clear date marked for when Cummins would start playing in IPL but the assumption within the franchise is that 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 in 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.

Nagraj Gollapudi is news editor at ESPNcricinfo

Click here to read article