Pat Cummins has been one of the most talked about absentees in IPL 2026 not because of anything he has done on the field, but precisely because he hasn’t been on it.
Update of Pat Cummins’ availability for RR vs SRH game
Seven matches into the Sunrisers Hyderabad season, their captain, their best bowler and the man who led them to the 2024 final has been watching from somewhere other than the middle.
That changes on Friday when Pat Cummins posted pictures of himself running in and bowling at full tilt on Instagram, captioning it with the kind of words that needed no further explanation. “Been a long time coming, stinging to get back into it tomorrow.” His SRH teammate Travis Head, never one to let a moment pass quietly, replied: “These AI pictures are getting better and better.” The update SRH fans have been waiting for since March has finally arrived.
RR vs SRH: The long road back from a back injury that took everything
This has not been a short or straightforward absence. Pat Cummins has been managing a back injury since last July, a problem that ruled him out of Australia’s T20 World Cup campaign entirely, a tournament they exited at the group stage without their captain and paid heavily for it.
His only competitive cricket between then and now was a single Ashes Test in December, a brief return that suggested progress but not yet the full picture. He joined the SRH squad on March 27 ahead of their IPL opener against RCB, traveled with the team to Kolkata for the KKR game on April 2, and then flew back to Australia on April 4 to undergo his final scans.
Those scans cleared him. A fitness test followed and he passed that too. Twenty-nine days after he first linked up with the squad, the picture Pat Cummins posted on Friday told its own story.
RR vs SRH: What Sunrisers Hyderabad look like now and why Pat Cummins return matters
In Pat Cummins’ absence, Ishan Kishan stepped up as captain and the results, after a shaky start, have been remarkable. SRH lost three of their first four matches and looked like a side searching for an identity without their leader.
Then something clicked. Three consecutive wins followed, including a 47-run demolition of Delhi Capitals in their last outing where Abhishek Sharma’s unbeaten 135 lit up the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in one of the innings of the tournament so far.
Eight points from seven games, fourth on the table, a net run rate of plus 0.820 that tells you the wins have been convincing rather than fortunate. The question now is not whether SRH need Pat Cummins, his 79 wickets in 72 IPL matches and the experience of leading the side to the 2024 final speak for themselves, but how seamlessly he slots back into a team that has found genuine rhythm without him.
Also READ: Sai Sudharsan breaks Chris Gayle’s iconic IPL record that stood for 13 long years
RR vs SRH: The Jaipur test and what Saturday means for Hyderabad’s season
Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium is not a gentle return fixture. RR started the season with four straight wins and, despite two consecutive defeats that have raised familiar questions about their mid-season resilience, remain dangerous at home.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has been batting at a strike rate of 236 this season and the Jaipur surface has historically been kind to batters willing to take on the short boundary. For a bowler returning from a lengthy back injury, walking into that environment in his first game back is as steep a challenge as it gets.
But this is also exactly the kind of situation Cummins has spent his career thriving in. After months of waiting, scans, fitness tests, and one Instagram post that said everything without saying anything directly, Saturday in Jaipur is where the second half of SRH’s season truly begins.
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