Sunrisers Hyderabad have announced Ishan Kishan as their skipper until Pat Cummins recovers from a back injury in the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the franchise announced on Wednesday. Abhishek Sharma will serve as Kishan’s deputy. SRH will begin their campaign against defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru on March 28 before travelling to face Kolkata Knight Riders on April 2.
The 2016 champions then take on Lucknow Super Giants on April 5. Cummins, who aggravated his back injury during the Ashes 2025-26, was forced to withdraw from the T20 World Cup 2026. Although the Cricket Australia medical team is closely monitoring Cummins, it is unclear about the timeline that Cummins will take to regain match fitness.
“Pat Cummins will miss a few games while recovering from injury. Until he recovers, Ishan Kishan will be the Captain and Abhishek Sharma will be the Vice-Captain,” Sunrisers Hyderabad shared on social media. Although the franchise didn’t dive deep on how many matches Cummins will miss, but it is certain that the Australian pacer will miss atleast a first couple of games.
Why SRH chose Ishan Kishan over Travis Head?
Besides Cummins, Kishan and Travis Head were the two leadership options at Sunrisers Hyderabad. Head has been a long-standing captain of South Australia in at the domestic level and had also led Australia for a few matches at the international level.
Head led Australia against Pakistan in the T20I series before T20 World Cup 2026 following Mitchell Marsh’s injury. Under, Head, Australia lost all three games and also went to captain in the T20 World Cup 2026 for two games – losing to Zimbabwe and winning against Ireland.
On the other hand, Kishan is coming after a brilliant Syed Mustaq Ali T20 (SMAT) trophy and T20 World Cup 2026 campaigns. Having been out of the senior team for mots than two years, Kishan returned with a bang after leading Jharkhand to their maiden SMAT title last year.
In fact he was the leading run-getter in the tournament with 500-plus runs. The 27-year-old continued his form in the T20 World Cup 2026, scoring 317 runs in nine games. As far as Abhishek is concerned, the Punjab lad had a poor T20 World Cup before lighting up when it mattered with a brilliant half-century against New Zealand in the final.
Sunrisers Hyderabad full squad for IPL 2026
Pat Cummins, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Aniket Verma, R. Smaran, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harsh Dubey, Kamindu Mendis, Harshal Patel, Brydon Carse, Jaydev Unadkat, Eshan Malinga, Zeeshan Ansari, Liam Livingstone, Shivam Mavi, Salil Arora, Shivang Kumar, Omkar Tarmale, Krains Fuletra, Praful Hinge, Amit Kumar, Sakib Hussain, Jack Edwards
