Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) coach Daniel Vettori has lauded the interim captain Ishan Kishan, calling him a confident person, player, and a really confident leader ahead of the IPL 2026 tournament. Kishan will captain SRH in place of Pat Cummins, who is still rehabbing from his back injury.

Cummins has joined the SRH camp but will miss the initial matches as he continues his workload management.

“I think Ishan’s been around in the IPL for a long period of time now. He’s been with several teams, and he’s been highly successful, so he brings in his own confidence around that. The fact that he’s led the U19s 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,” Vettori said in the pre-match press meet on Friday.

Ishan Kishan had joined the SRH franchise in IPL 2025 and hammered a century and a fifty in his debut season for SRH, scoring 354 runs in 14 games.

“I think he started last year, where he was added as 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, 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.

SRH will play RCB in the IPL 2026 tournament opener in Bengaluru on Saturday, March 28, and will be without Pat Cummins.

Vettori revealed that they will have an answer in 10-12 days when the Australia Test and ODI captain will be ready to be back in action.

“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,” Vettori added.

SRH had finished 6th in the IPL 2025 points table, despite being the finalists in the previous edition in 2024.

(PTI inputs)