How quickly Cricket Australia allows will decide how quickly fast bowler Josh Hazlewood is available to play for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the upcoming 19th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
35-year-old Hazlewood has not played international cricket or any competitive cricket for several months now. He didn’t feature in any of the five Ashes Tests in 2025-26 as well the T20 World Cup that got over earlier this month in India.
Australia are going to play a lot of Test matches home and away in 2026-27, including a five-Test rubber against India in India. They are also playing Bangladesh, New Zealand, South Africa and one special Test against England in March next year, marking the 150th anniversary of the Ashes rivalry.
Then of course, there are white-ball matches. So the CA is not taking any chances on the recoveries of Hazlewood as well as Mitchell Starc of Delhi Capitals.
RCB director of cricket Mo Bobat has shed more light on the Hazlewood situation. Hazlewood, with 22 wickets in 12 matches in 2025, was instrumental to RCB’s title-winning campaign.
“So, as most people would know, Josh has missed quite a bit of cricket recently with injuries. So he’s currently working through a return to play programme. He’s doing that in Australia currently. We are liaising very closely with both Josh and Cricket Australia. And our medical teams are collaborating very strongly on a day-to-day basis on this programme,” Mo Bobat said.
“We’ll continue to communicate with him. And as soon as he gets to a point where Cricket Australia are happy, he’ll come over. And we hope to have him with us very soon,” he added.
Defending champions RCB have another worry in medium pacer Yash Dayal, who won’t feature in IPL 2026 at all on account of a couple of very serious criminal cases against him, including sexual assault. However, Mo Bobat is not too much worried as he claims the team has enough resources to step into the breach.
There are some good replacements though!
“The Yash Dayal situation has been tricky because obviously it’s been around for some time now. And it’s difficult to predict what will happen. We went into our auction planning for a worst-case scenario, that he may not be available for us. And so we have recruited accordingly. We have some excellent domestic fast bowlers in our squad,” he said.
“Rasikh, who many of you will know, Abhinandan had been there last year. And then we also signed Mangesh in this auction. So, domestically we have three excellent potential options that we’re facing. So, it’s obviously a blow losing a player like Yash. That’s obvious, he’s been an important part of us for the last couple of years. But we’re very confident in the options we’ve got in the squad. And we will select a team accordingly,” he added.
