Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) opener Abhishek Sharma’s battle with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB)’s debutant pacer Jacob Duffy headlined a brilliant opening act to the IPL 2026 season at the M. Chinnaswamy
Stadium on Saturday (March 28).
It was Abhishek’s partner, Travis Head, who took the strike for the first ball and eventually hit the first runs of the season. Abhishek came to the tournaments with a cloud of doubt hanging over him, despite his success in the 2026 T20 World Cup final. On the fourth ball, it looked like some of that was behind him as the Indian left-hander stretched himself to slice a wide ball from Duffy for a big six over point.
Abhishek, thus, became the first player to hit a maximum or boundary in the year.
However, Duffy did his job well in the over, conceding no more runs. The New Zealand pacer, who replaced the injured Josh Hazlewood in RCB’s 11 for this game, went a step further in his next over.
He outfoxed Abhishek with a brilliant bouncer at the start. The ball was hurled with a cross-seam and got big on the SRH star, who couldn’t get on top of the bounce while trying the pull shot. The ball took a top-edge and wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma calmly settled under and caught it at the short fine leg region.
Duffy was clearly not content with becoming the first wicket-taker in IPL 2026. He finished the over just how he started — with a brilliant plan. He bowled short and into Head’s body, and the Australian ended up playing a short-arm pull straight to deep square leg, where Phil Salt made no mistake.
RCB captain Rajat Patidar was smart enough to stick with Duffy for a third over in the power play. The Kiwi repaid the faith by getting Nitish Kumar Reddy trapped on a short ball for 1 (6). He bowled his fourth immediately after the powerplay, conceding five runs to end with figures of 3/22.
Did Jacob Duffy adequately replace Josh Hazlewood?
Hazlewood will miss at least the first couple of games due to his fitness issues. It was always going to be a huge blow to RCB because of the impact he had last season — 22 wickets in just 12 matches. But at least in the power play, Duffy managed to give RCB control and seam movement, just like Hazlewood.
He’ll be tested at the death overs, but debuts don’t get much better than this.
