IPL 2026: Ishan Kishan rises and shines for Sunrisers!

SRH’s Ishan Kishan during his 47-ball 70 against CSK in Chennai on Monday. Pic/IPL

Less than 24 hours after Ishan Kishan smashed a 47-ball 70 to lead Sunrisers Hyderabad to a dominant five-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings and pave their way into the Playoffs, the swashbuckling India batter was rewarded with a call-up to the ODI squad for the three-match series against Afghanistan. Interestingly, Kishan played his last ODI against Afghanistan in October 2023.

The home assignments against Afghanistan include a one-off Test in Mullanpur starting June 6, followed by three ODIs in Dharamsala (June 14), Lucknow (June 17), and Chennai (June 20).

Kishan, 27, replaced Rishabh Pant as the wicketkeeper-batter in India's ODI team which was announced on Tuesday. Pant also lost his Test vice-captaincy role to KL Rahul ahead of the one-off fixture against Afghanistan, starting on June 6.

Kishan, who led Jharkhand to their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in December 2025 and subsequently returned to the national T20 set-up, has gone from strength to strength since. He scored 317 runs in nine matches at a strike-rate of 193.29 during India's T20 World Cup triumph earlier this year. In the ongoing IPL, Kishan has scored 490 runs for SRH in 13 matches at an impressive strike-rate of 179.48.

The attacking wicketkeeper-batter earned plenty of praise after his heroics against CSK on Monday, with SRH skipper Pat Cummins appreciating his leadership skills. "I thought the way [Heinrich] Klaseen and Ishan chased down, it was really gutsy, so very happy. Ishan in particular, [he was] captain for half of it [ongoing IPL], so he deserves a lot more credit," said Cummins.

SRH assistant coach James Franklin called this Kishan's best knock. "That was probably his [Kishan's] best innings. Ishan's innings just had so much maturity about it, just the way that he assessed what was required and what was necessary, and then managed to bat as deep as he possibly could through to 20 overs," Franklin said.

490
No. of runs scored by Ishan Kishan in 13 IPL matches for SRH this season

317
No. of runs scored by Ishan Kishan in nine matches at the 2026 T20 World Cup

517
No. of runs scored by Ishan Kishan in 10 matches during Jharkhand's Syed Mushtaq Ali triumph last year

India's Test squad
S Gill (c), Y Jaiswal, KL Rahul (vc), S Sudharsan, R Pant, D Padikkal, NK Reddy, W Sundar, K Yadav, M Siraj, P Krishna, M Suthar, G Brar, H Dubey, D Jurel

India's ODI squad
S Gill (c), S Iyer (vc), R Sharma, V Kohli, KL Rahul (wk), I Kishan (wk), H Pandya, NK Reddy, W Sundar, H Dubey, K Yadav, A Singh, P Krishna, P Yadav, G Brar

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