Pat Cummins has laid out a straightforward plan: recover the back, miss the opening few fixtures, then slot in for the run-in and, if all goes well, the play-offs. It is not flashy, just honest – and, given the Australian quick’s recent luck, very much needed.
The 32-year-old is still nursing the lumbar stress issue that forced him out of the T20 World Cup and restricted him to a single competitive outing – the third Ashes Test last December – since last July. Sunrisers Hyderabad therefore begin IPL 2026 without their marquee overseas captain, handing the reins temporarily to Ishan Kishan.
Cummins arrived in Bengaluru earlier this week, completed a handful of light sprints during the warm-ups at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday, and then bowled a few gentle deliveries into an empty net. Small steps, but steps all the same.
Speaking on the Business of Sport podcast, recorded late last week, he sketched out the timeline. “I’m still recovering from a back injury, but it’s good. I’m back bowling in the nets,” he said. “The IPL is starting soon. I won’t make the start of that, but it shouldn’t be too long before I’m back out there playing.
“I’m back bowling. I’m bowling basically every third day at the moment. We’ve mapped out a plan to get me right by [the] middle of the tournament, so hopefully, if nothing goes wrong, [I’ll] play the back half plus the finals.”
That calculation leaves Sunrisers to negotiate roughly six or seven league matches without him. Kishan, fresh from leading Jharkhand to the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in December, is the stand-in. Cummins sounded entirely comfortable with that arrangement. “Ishan’s had a really successful captaincy stint with his local side in the last year or so,” he noted.
The Australian also admitted the language gap – some domestic players favouring local dialects over English – can challenge a visiting skipper. “Those guys, you’re leaning on anyway. We’ve got quite an experienced bowling group of local guys, so a few of the younger guys that come through that I don’t know as well, particularly early on in a season, I’m definitely leaning on the local guys who do know them well – or even speak the language,” he explained. “Most of the guys speak really great English, but some of them don’t, and there are local dialects, so that can be a little bit of a barrier for an international captain.”
How much will Cummins’ absence hurt? His pace and leadership are obvious losses, yet the side does possess depth: Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s new-ball nous, T Natarajan’s death-over control, plus the emerging left-armer Kartik Tyagi. They are not short of options; they are short of the man paid to marshal them.
In the opening block the focus must therefore tilt towards scoring big and often – a sensible approach at the smaller Indian grounds. Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram and Rahul Tripathi look set to shoulder that responsibility until Cummins adds his lower-order hitting and strategic head.
Sunrisers, champions back in 2016, start against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Saturday night. Early points always help, though in a ten-team IPL the main task is to stay within touching distance until late April. If Cummins returns on schedule, and if that troublesome back holds up to four-over spells every few nights, Hyderabad’s second half could look far stronger than their first. Those are a pair of sizeable “ifs”, but the player himself sounds quietly convinced. For now, slow sprints and empty nets will have to do.
