IPL 2026 dark horses: The quiet ones who might roar

CSK: Two boys from Uttar Pradesh and a wicketkeeper’s ghost

Everyone is talking about Sanju Samson. The big trade. The World Cup hero. The new face of Chennai. But in a small room at Chepauk, two young men from Uttar Pradesh are trying not to think about the price tags hanging around their necks.

Prashant Veer is 22. He bowls left-arm spin with the same action his father taught him in a village with no proper pitch. Last month, CSK paid ₹14.20 crore for him. That is more money than his family has seen in three generations.

“I keep checking my phone to see if the message is still there,” he told a friend. He knows he is supposed to be Ravindra Jadeja‘s replacement. He also knows Jadeja has won more IPL trophies than he has played.

Then there is Kartik Sharma. Nineteen years old. Another ₹14.20 crore. Another boy carrying a legend’s shadow. MS Dhoni will probably walk out as Impact Player this season, knees willing.

Sharma’s job is to learn from a man who finishes games in his sleep, while somehow also being ready to take over. “He asked me about my favorite finishers,” Sharma said. “I said Dhoni. He laughed. I did not know what else to say.”

The thing about Chennai is that they do not buy players. They buy problems and hope the player is the solution. Veer and Sharma are not just uncapped talents. They are answers to questions CSK has been asking since last season ended.

Mumbai Indians: The boy who refused to leave and a spinner who came back

Naman Dhir was not supposed to stay. Mumbai Indians release players like old clothes. Every auction, someone goes. But Dhir scored 252 runs last year at a strike rate that made even Suryakumar Yadav look twice. 182.61. Try saying that number to a scout and watch their eyes change.

He is 24. He grew up in Delhi watching Rohit Sharma on a small television. Now he sits next to him in the dressing room. “I still ask him about 2013,” Dhir admits. The first title. The beginning of everything.

Mumbai kept him because he solves a puzzle. They can play five bowlers now. They can rest Bumrah without panic. Dhir makes the math work.

Mayank Markande left Mumbai angry. Traded away, forgotten, another leg-spinner in a country full of them. Now he is back, and the team needs him differently. Last season, they realised they could not just blast teams out at Wankhede.

Sometimes the ball has to stop. Markande does not turn it like Warne. He holds it back. He makes the batter wait. In a team of fast men and hitters, he is the pause button.

RCB: A New Zealander walking into fire and a mystery no one solved

Jacob Duffy has never played in Bangalore. He has seen videos. The small boundaries. The ball flying into the stands. “Looks like fun,” he said when they signed him. He was being polite. Duffy knows he is here because Josh Hazlewood cannot walk properly. Achilles. Hamstring. The body betraying the bowler at thirty-five.

RCB won their first title last year by being boring. They defended totals. They did not chase impossible scores. They let others make mistakes. Duffy has to do that now, in a stadium where mistakes fly over the rope.

He swings the new ball. That is his trick. In Bangalore, the new ball does not swing for long. The altitude kills it. Duffy has six games to figure out what to do when his only weapon disappears.

Suyash Sharma is already famous for being unknown. Mystery spin. The kind of bowling that makes commentators use words like “carrom ball” and “wrong’un” without knowing which is which. RCB used him as Impact Player last season.

He took wickets in the middle overs when the game was slipping. This year, they might need him to do more. Rajat Patidar trusts him. That is the only review that matters in that dressing room.

KKR: The Australian gamble and a boy who played without fear

Cameron Green cost more than some teams spent on entire purchase last auction. ₹25.20 crore. He is tall. He hits hard. He bowls fast enough. He also breaks down. KKR knows this.

They have Matheesha Pathirana too, another expensive body with a history of falling apart. It is like buying two beautiful cars and hoping at least one starts.

Green’s problem is expectation. In Australia, he is the next big thing who never quite became the current big thing. In India, he is supposed to be the reason KKR wins. He bats four. He bowls in the powerplay. He fields with his bucket hands.

“I just want to play all the games,” he said in his first press conference. It sounded like a prayer.

Angkrish Raghuvanshi does not pray. He just hits. Three hundred runs in his last season. Average of 33 and strike rate of 139.5. Not extraordinary numbers, but the way he got them mattered. He looked like he belonged.

Like he had been doing this forever. KKR will use him as Impact Player in chases. Send him in when the required rate is climbing. Let him swing without consequence. Some boys shrink in those moments. Raghuvanshi expands.

Rajasthan Royals: A Child Prodigy and a Man Coming Home

Vaibhav Suryavanshi is fifteen. He has already scored a century in the IPL. He has already played for India in the Under-19 World Cup. He has already hit 24 sixes in a tournament where most boys his age are worrying about board exams. Now he opens with Yashasvi Jaiswal, who is only twenty-three but seems ancient in comparison.

The Royals are building something strange. The youngest squad in the league. A captain, Riyan Parag, who is still learning to lead.

And in the middle of this youth movement, they have brought back Ravindra Jadeja. The man who started here. The man who left. The man who returns with grey in his beard and trophies in his memory.

Jadeja is not a dark horse. Everyone knows what he does. But in this team, with these children around him, he becomes something else. The voice that says slow down when Suryavanshi wants to hit every ball for six. The hand that catches what the young bowlers throw wide. Rajasthan traded their captain for this. They must believe it was worth it.

Sunrisers Hyderabad: A Captain By Accident and a Mystery in the Middle

Ishan Kishan was not supposed to lead. Pat Cummins was. Then Cummins’ back gave out, like backs do when you have bowled a million overs. Suddenly, the wicketkeeper who lost his India place was running the team.

He had a hundred last season. Forty-five balls. The old Ishan, before the slump, before the questions. Now he has to be that player and the man who decides when to use the Impact Player and how to set the field.

Nitish Kumar Reddy is twenty-two. He hit 76 runs off 42 balls against Rajasthan in 2024. Then he disappeared. That is what happens to young Indian players in the IPL. One good season, then the struggle to be remembered.

Reddy is still here. He can bowl a bit. He can finish an innings. In a team that lives or dies by Head and Abhishek Sharma’s opening blitz, Reddy is the insurance policy.

Punjab Kings: The left-hander who broke time and a bowler no one names

Priyansh Arya hit six sixes in an over. In the Delhi Premier League, which is not the IPL, but still. Six sixes. Then he scored a century in thirty-nine balls for Punjab last season. He is twenty-four. He grew up in Delhi, which means he grew up knowing there are ten thousand boys just like him, all wanting the same spot.

Shreyas Iyer is the captain. He is the anchor. Arya is the kite cut loose. He scored 475 runs in seventeen matches, which does not sound like much until you see how he got them. The sixes. The fearlessness.

The sense that he does not know or care about the price of failure. Punjab lost the final by six runs last year. If Arya had faced one more ball, it might have been different.

Vyshak Vijaykumar bowled wide yorkers against Gujarat when everyone thought the game was gone. He is not famous. He might not play ten games this season. But Punjab remembers. Coaches remember. In the Impact Player era, being remembered is almost as important as being good.

Lucknow Super Giants: Fast men and a Captain searching

Mayank Yadav bowls the ball faster than anyone in India. He has a strike rate of 13.4 balls per wicket, which means he takes one almost every two overs. He also breaks down. Stress fractures. The fast bowler’s tax.

Lucknow has Anrich Nortje too, another speed merchant with a medical file. And Mohammed Shami, traded from Hyderabad, who is thirty-five and has taken 133 IPL wickets but is coming back from ankle surgery.

Rishabh Pant is the captain. He scored 269 runs last season. The worst year of his professional life. The year he lost his India place. The year people started using “former wonder” when they talked about him.

He is still the best wicketkeeper-batter in the squad. He is still the face on every poster. But somewhere in the numbers, there is a question. Can he come back? Or is this who he is now?

Delhi Capitals: A man from Baramulla and a South African ghost

Auqib Nabi Dar is twenty-nine. He is not young by IPL standards. This year, he led Jammu and Kashmir to their first Ranji Trophy title. Sixty wickets. Then he scored a hundred in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Delhi paid Rs 8.40 crore for a man who was not on most teams’ lists.

Starc might not play early games. Workload management. The phrase that haunts modern cricket. Nabi might have to lead the attack in Mumbai or Bangalore, places that eat medium-pacers for breakfast. He has never failed at anything important. The IPL is important. We will see if he fails now.

David Miller came for ₹2 crore. The Killer Miller. The man who finished games for South Africa for a decade. Delhi needed someone who knew how to win. Miller has forgotten more about winning than most players will ever learn.

He is thirty-six. He does not run like he used to. But in the last over overs, with 15 runs needed, would you rather have a young man with energy or an old man who has done this before?

Gujarat Titans: The quietest team and the loudest spinner

Sai Kishore does not look like a cricketer. He looks like a student who stayed back after class to ask extra questions. He took three for thirty against Punjab last year in a game Punjab scored 243 runs. He did not celebrate much. He just walked back to his mark.

Gujarat retained twenty players. They believe in knowing what they have. Kishore is what they have. A left-arm spinner who does not turn the ball much but knows where to put it.

Rashid Khan is not a dark horse. He is the sun around which Gujarat orbits. But even suns need clouds sometimes.

Someone to hold the other end. Someone to change the pace when the batsmen are swinging. Kishore is the cloud. The unspectacular necessary thing.

What this all means

The IPL is built on stars. The Samsons. The Kohlis. The Bumrahs. But stars burn out. They get injured. They lose form. The tournament is too long for anyone to carry alone.

This is why the dark horses matter. The Veers and Sharmas and Dhirs and Reddys. They are the spare parts that become essential. The insurance policies that pay off.

In 2026, with the World Cup done and bodies tired, the teams that last will be the ones who treated these quiet players with respect. Who gave them belief along with their paychecks. Who understood that in a season this brutal, the hero might be the boy who was just happy to be picked.