Mitchell Starc, an Australian cricketer will not be part of the initial phase of the next Indian premier league (IPL) 2026, as Delhi Capitals have been dealt a huge setback. The franchise will have lack of massive experience of Starc in their pace attack as Cricket Australia has requested the cricketer to postpone his arrival in India and this will enable him to handle his workload effectively.
The loss of Mitchell Starc would imply that the franchise in Delhi could need to trust its Indian core a bit more. Nonetheless, they possess such an option as Kyle Jamieson, Lungi Ngidi, and Dushmantha Chameera to bridge the gap of an overseas pacer. The unavailability of the experienced bowler could also give the Auqib Nabi enough opportunities to relentlessly attack with Mukesh Kumar and T. Natarajan.
Cricket Australia, according to the cricket.com.au, would most definitely like their contracted players to be fresh and fit in preparation of great international missions later this year in August. The Aussies will travel to South Africa, India and England on multi-format tours in a move to reaffirm their defense title at the 2027 ODI world cup. This presence of Starc in Australian squad, therefore, becomes a major parameter in realizing these long term objectives.
Delhi Capitals’ squad for IPL 2026
Axar Patel, KL Rahul, Kuldeep Yadav, Mitchell Starc, T. Natarajan, Tristan Stubbs, Auqib Nabi, Mukesh Kumar, Nitish Rana (traded in), Pathum Nissanka, Abishek Porel, Ashutosh Sharma, Ben Duckett, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi, Sameer Rizvi, Dushmantha Chameera, Prithvi Shaw, Karun Nair, Vipraj Nigam, Madhav Tiwari, Ajay Mandal, Tripurana Vijay, Sahil Parakh, Vihaan Malhotra, Kyle Jamieson
Plethora of overseas unavailabilities
Starc is not the only Australian pacer, who will skip the next IPL season. The captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad, Pat Cummins is also not going to attend the season at the initial stage, and Ishan Kishan is the interim captain. Also, Nathan Ellis of CSK has been declared unavailable through the whole 2026 event of the tournament following a hamstring injury as the champions who have won the tournament five times are now in need of a new pace bowler to replace the young one.
The partial retirement of Starc will be added to the list of foreign players that will not be observed participating in the 2026 version of the big-paying event. The most notable one is Mustafizur Rahman who had to be removed under a BCCI order. Moreover, Matheesha Pathirana, another pacer of Kolkata Knight Riders is another player who is not yet issued with No-Objection Certificate by SLC since he has not even cleared the fitness tests.
