Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 will not involve the participation of the fast bowler Akash Deep. The Bengal seamer was undergoing treatment at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru of the BCCI due to a non-disclosed illness.
He was to play on the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team after being bid at the mini auction by the team at his best price of INR 1.00 crore. Regrettably, however, the speedster would have to follow the forthcoming season of the profitable league on the bench.
Harshit Rana, the best native pacer at KKR, injured himself in the pre-T20 World Cup warm up game against India and South Africa. He will not be in a position to participate in the whole IPL event. The Sri Lankan prodigy Matheesha Pathirana is expected to skip the first few games of the 20-team tournament due to health reasons.
During their training camp in Kolkata, the head of KKR called up a number of well-known fast bowlers. Bowlers like Navdeep Saini, Simarjeet Singh, and Akash Madhwal were working hard to get an IPL contract. However, it was revealed on Sunday, March 22, that Saurabh Dubey had joined KKR to take Akash’s spot. Although he hasn’t yet made his IPL debut, Dubey, a left-arm seamer from Vidarbha, was formerly a member of the Sunrisers Hyderabad team.
“He is a very talented left-arm fast bowler. I remember him touring Bangladesh under Rahul Dravid as part of the 2019 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup squad. He gets extra bounce off the wicket and can swing the ball both ways. It’s a good call by the Knight Riders management,” said Subroto Banerjee as quoted by Cricbuzz.
On March 29, KKR will play the Mumbai Indians at Wankhede Stadium to begin their IPL 2026 season.
KKR’s updated squad for IPL 2026
Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Ajinkya Rahane, Manish Pandey, Rovman Powell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Umran Malik, Cameron Green, Finn Allen, Matheesha Pathirana, Tejasvi Singh, Kartik Tyagi, Prashant Solanki, Daksh Kamra, Sarthak Ranjan, Blessing Muzarabani, Rahul Tripathi, Tim Seifert, Rachin Ravindra, and Saurabh Dubey.
