Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are expected to sit out the opening rounds of this year’s IPL, with Cricket Australia (CA) preferring to keep fresh legs for a packed Test schedule that stretches right through to mid-2027.
CA medical staff have already told the franchises concerned – Delhi Capitals for Starc and Royal Challengers Bengaluru for Hazlewood – to plan without the pair for at least the first fortnight. “The sheer volume of cricket over the next 18 months means we have to be smart with how we use our fast bowlers,” CA’s head of national teams Ben Oliver said last week. Delhi, for one, are resigned to it. A back-room coach summed it up bluntly: “We’d love him from day one, obviously, but we’d rather have him firing in May than broken in April.”
The Australians missing all or part of the tournament now form a sizeable queue. Pat Cummins (Sunrisers Hyderabad) is also out for the opening block, Jack Edwards – signed by the same franchise – has been scrubbed completely after an ankle blow-out, and Chennai Super Kings expect Nathan Ellis’s hamstring to rule him out altogether.
Workload is the common theme. Cummins managed a solitary Test over the home summer because of a stress injury in his back. Hazlewood’s hamstring and Achilles flare-ups wiped him from the Ashes entirely, although he squeezed in a handful of white-ball matches and one Sheffield Shield outing last November. Starc, by contrast, bowled through all five Ashes Tests, took 31 wickets, won Player of the Series and then dived straight into the BBL. He has already quit international T20s, but that alone has not uncluttered his diary.
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting understands the caution. “You can’t expect them to play every format and every tournament,” he told Channel 7 during the BBL finals. “Fast bowling is brutal work. Something has to give.”
The 2026 IPL starts on 28 March and is due to run through to late May. Australia, meanwhile, have pencilled in up to 21 Tests between August 2026 and July 2027 – away tours to Pakistan and South Africa, plus home series against India and England, dominate that window. It is that stretch, rather than the next eight weeks in India, that is governing CA’s thinking.
For Capitals and RCB, the equation is simple enough: juggle overseas slots early, hope the cavalry arrives before the business end.
