Ishan Kishan was given the position of stand-in captain by the Sunrisers Hyderabad team management without much hesitation, according to head coach Daniel Vettori on Friday. Kishan has shown himself to be a “confident player and leader.”
Due to a back injury, regular captain Pat Cummins will miss the first part of the 2026 Indian Premier League.
“I think Ishan’s been around in the IPL for a long period of time now. He’s been with a number of teams and he’s been highly successful, so, he brings in his own confidence around that,” PTI quoted Vettori as saying in the pre-match press meet in Bengaluru on Friday.
“The fact that he’s led the U-19s and his state team and they won the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy this year brings a confident person, a confident player and a really confident leader and those are the attributes that we really looked at when he was appointed. His combination with Abhishek, they’re good friends, they know the team exceptionally well and I really feel like those two will lead from the front this season.”
Additionally, it is a unique occasion for all IPL teams to begin the season with Indian captains. Beyond that uniqueness, Vettori believed that Kishan’s development as a cricketer and leader over the past few years had given SRH another weapon.
“I think he started last year where he was added a senior player to the group and the leadership that he exuded throughout that first season, particularly in the back half when he took over the wicketkeeping, it really brought energy to the group and set up our back half of the year and we were pretty successful in that period.
“So when Pat (Cummins) was unfortunately out of the initial stage of the tournament, we had some decisions to make and his (Kishan’s) experience with his state team in particular had been so impressive and then he was in really good form. So, between Abhishek and himself, we feel like we’ve got a really good leadership group to lead us this year,” Vettori said.
In the next two weeks or so, Cummins might return to lead the team, according to the Kiwi.
“His fitness has been exceptional because he’s been out of the game for an extended period of time, so, he’s had that time to work on that fitness, a real block of work around strength and conditioning. The only challenge for him was the bowling loads.
“So once he got the all clear from Cricket Australia to build those bowling loads, it’s obviously a bit of a painstaking process to get the lungs up to where he feels confident and strong about bowling. Hopefully, we can get a definitive timeline, probably in the next 10-12 days around when he can return to play,” he added.
However, Vettori stated that they had adequate replacements for Cummins in the roles of bowler and skipper.
“It’s always a challenge when you take out that integral part of your team’s captain and fast bowler but I think we’ve got suitable replacements and I know Ishan is incredibly excited about the captain of the team and we can lean on Pat the whole time until he’s actually able to play.”
Although the SRH top-order batting unit can intimidate opposition bowlers, Vettori stated that the group’s difficulty will be to adjust to challenging conditions during the 2026 IPL. Abhishek, Travis Head, Ishan, and Heinrich Klaasen are the top four batters who can easily maintain a scoring rate of more than ten runs per over.
“We obviously know we’re an aggressive team and we bat deep and all of those players take the game on and we’ve seen when we get on really good surfaces that that group of batters is difficult to stop,” Vettori said.
“But the challenge for us this year is when we get on those surfaces that are a little bit tricky, how we adapt to them, how we assess. I think that’s been a conversation point for all the batting groups around how to deal with that,” he added.
