New Zealand fast bowler Jacob Duffy made a stellar debut to his Indian Premier League (IPL 2026) career, taking three wickets in the powerplay during the RCB vs SRH match today (March 28). The INR 2 crore recruit stepped and delivered the goods in the absence of Royal Challengers Bengaluru key pacer Josh Hazlewood, who will miss the initial few games due to injury.
Notably, the Aussie pacer had suffered a hamstring injury last year, following which he suffered from an Achilles issue, and was subsequently ruled out of Ashes 2025 and the T20 World Cup 2026 earlier this year.
Duffy bowled an incredible spell in the powerplay to make a dream debut, where he took the key wickets of Travis Head (11), Abhishek Sharma (7) and Nitish Kumar Reddy (1) and dismissed them cheaply to put SRH on the backfoot while leaking only 17 runs from his first three overs.
Following the heroic display, RCB fans hailed the Kiwi quick for filling the void of Hazlewood rather impeccably. Check some of the best reactions on X (formerly Twitter) below.
Given his incredible rhythm, RCB skipper Rajat Patidar eventually decided to bowl Duffy out in the seventh over. While he failed to find any more wickets, Jacob Duffy finished his four-over quota with impressive figures of 3/22.
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Speaking about the RCB vs SRH contest, after the initial setback which saw Sunrisers reeling at 29/3 in the fifth over, it was the wicketkeeper duo of Ishan Kishan and Heinrich Klaasen who rebuilt the innings.
At the time of writing this report, the SRH scoreboard reads 88/3 in 10.2 overs with Ishan Kishan and Heinrich Klaasen currently batting in the middle. Hyderabad will hope that the pair can remain in the middle as long as possible and propel the scoreboard before a flourish at the death overs with the likes of Aniket Verma, Salil Arora yet to come.
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