Ishan Kishan and Daniel Vettori (PTI Photo) BENGALURU: Sunrisers Hyderabad will be without their regular captain and leading pacer Pat Cummins for at least the first two weeks of the IPL, with the Australian currently working his way back to full bowling fitness.Head coach Daniel Vettori sought to allay concerns over Cummins’ condition, stressing that the pacer’s overall fitness is not in doubt.
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IPL 2026: Ishan Kishan steals the show at the captains’ meet“His fitness has been exceptional. He’s been out for a long time so he’s had time to put in a real block of work around strength and conditioning,” Vettori said in Friday’s pre-match press conference.The challenge, according to the former New Zealand captain, lies in rebuilding Cummins’ bowling load.“The only issue has been his bowling workloads. Once he got the all clear from Cricket Australia, it’s been a bit of a tough process to build him up to where he feels confident and strong about bowling. It will continue over the next few weeks and hopefully we’ll have a clearer timeline in 10 to 12 days,” he explained.Vettori was all praise for stand-in captain Ishan Kishan, who, apart from the purple spot in the T20 World Cup, also led Jharkhand to Syed Mushtaq Ali’s first T20 title.“He was added to the group last year and the leadership he showed throughout the season, especially in the back half when he took over in goal, really brought energy to the group and prepared our back half. With Cummins unfortunately out of the opening stages of the tournament, we obviously had to make some decisions. His experience with his state team in particular was so impressive and he himself felt really comfortable with us (Sharmaish) we have a really good leadership group to lead us this year.”Vettori also added that for a place in the XI. are contested by three young Indians led by Karnataka southpaw R Smaran. The other two players are Aniket Verma and Salil Arora.
