Chennai Super Kings look set to do without Khaleel Ahmed for the rest of IPL 2026 after the left-arm quick pulled up midway through his spell against Kolkata Knight Riders in Chennai on 14 April. He stopped five balls into his final over, winced, and trudged off. Rookie seamer Gurjapneet Singh finished the over; he may now find himself bowling a lot more at the death than anyone at the franchise had planned.
The precise nature of Khaleel’s problem has not yet been made public, though early indications from team staff point to a muscle strain rather than anything bony. “We’ll wait for the scans, but it doesn’t look great,” one member of the medical team muttered while leaving the stadium. That brief line summed up the mood in the dressing-room.
CSK can ill afford another absentee. MS Dhoni is already out with a calf strain. Back on 28 March the club said he was “likely to miss the first two weeks” – a line that now feels optimistic. Dhoni has been spotted in nets taking gentle throw-downs, yet he still walks gingerly between drills. Nathan Ellis is also unavailable for the whole tournament, and his replacement, fellow Australian Spencer Johnson, is still rehabbing back home.
Options? Maharashtra’s Mukesh Choudhary is the obvious like-for-like, another left-armer who swings it early. Ramakrishna Ghosh offers a different shape: right-arm, skiddy, and no mug with the bat. Ghosh’s stock rose sharply during the 2025-26 domestic season. He tore through Himachal Pradesh with 7 for 42 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, then belted an unbeaten 64 off 27 against Mumbai – evidence of a useful second string.
CSK have two wins from five starts, hardly terminal but hardly smooth either. They head to Hyderabad to meet Sunrisers on Saturday, a fixture that suddenly looks trickier with yet another frontline bowler unavailable. Coach Stephen Fleming tends to play injury news down, yet even he admitted last week, “You never like re-writing your XI every couple of days.”
League campaigns are rarely won in April, but they can start to unravel. If Khaleel’s scans confirm the worst, Super Kings will need depth – and maybe a little luck – to keep their season on the tracks.
