Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have announced the Akash Deep replacement for the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL 2026) season, starting March 28. Notably, the INR 1 crore KKR recruit got ruled out due to a lower-back stress reaction he suffered during the Ranji Trophy 2025-26 earlier in February.
Although Akash Deep is rehabbing at the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE), it is now understood that he won’t recover in time with the injury turning out to be more serious than initially anticipated. The three-time winners have thus roped in former Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) pacer Saurabh Dubey to fill the void.
The left-arm Vidarbha fast bowler, who was bought by SRH back in the IPL 2022 auction for INR 20 lakhs, will now ply his trade for the Purple and Gold brigade. Interestingly, Dubey was not in the IPL 2026 shortlist and did not go under the hammer but his selection by KKR means he was a part of the Registered Available Player Pool (RAPP) – the list of players who had registered for the auction.
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The Kolkata outfit will sweat over the injury concerns to their fast bowlers which have run the pace department thin. Key Indian speedsters Harshit Rana and Akash Deep have already been ruled out with respective knee and back injuries. Furthermore, the overseas fast bowlers – Mustafizur Rahman have been released due to political reasons while uncertainty remains over the exact unavailability of Matheesha Pathirana who is rehabbing from a calf injury.
KKR have already signed the replacements for Fizz in Zimbabwe pacer Blessing Muzarabani with Harsh Dubey filling in the void left by Akash Deep. It is also reported that the Ajinkya Rahane-led sid are trialling multiple fast bowlers to sign as Harshit Rana replacement.
The onus to spearhead the pace battery will thus lie mostly on Vaibhav Arora and Blessing Muzarabani till Pathirana joins. Umran Malik and Kartik Tyagi are the only other pacers available at KKR’s disposal. Apart from them, there are a few seam bowling all-rounders like Ramandeep Singh and Cameron Green, who can also roll their arm over.
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