In IPL 2026, Delhi Capitals has included English cricketer Rehan Ahmed in its team as a replacement for Ben Duckett. Ahmed will join Delhi Capitals for an amount of Rs 75 lakh. Duckett had withdrawn his name from the IPL 2026 season citing his commitment to the England cricket team. The Delhi team did not immediately announce his replacement and in his absence, Sri Lanka’s Pathum Nissanka took the responsibility of opening along with KL Rahul.

21 year old Rehan Ahmed has created a sensation across the world with his leg-spin bowling. Ahmed, known as a bowling all-rounder, has so far taken 85 wickets and scored 1071 runs in 97 T20 matches. He has shown brilliant performance in The Hundred League, where he has taken 23 wickets in 25 innings. He also has experience of playing in Big Bash League and ILT20. This will be the first time that Rehan Ahmed will play for an IPL team.

Rehan Ahmed has played for England in all three formats. He has taken a total of 49 international wickets in his career of 5 Test matches, 9 ODIs and 13 T20 matches. Rehan Ahmed will join the strong spin bowling unit of Delhi Capitals, which already includes Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Vipraj Nigam and Tripuran Vijay.

There are many in-form batsmen in the Delhi Capitals team, but the bowling has not been very impressive. The result of this is that there is no bowler from Delhi present in the top-15 of the Purple Cap race.

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KL Rahul IPL 2026: Delhi Capitals has taken a big decision on the playing eleven before the start of IPL 2026. Head coach of Delhi team Hemang Badani says that his aim this time will be to remove the shortcomings in the top order. Coach Badani made it clear that this time KL Rahul will take the responsibility of opening. Let us remind you that in IPL 2025, Delhi Capitals had fielded seven opening pairs, but most of the pairs flopped.

KL Rahul will open

KL Rahul batted mostly at numbers 3 and 4 last season. However, he also got a chance to open in the last few matches of the season. But coach Hemang Badani made it clear in the pre-season conference that this time senior player Rahul will open. But who will be his opening partner has not been disclosed.

Last time, Delhi had made a total of 7 opening pairs including Faf du Plessis, KL Rahul, Abhishek Porel, Karun Nair, Jake Fraser McGurk and 13 changes were made in the top order.

Delhi Capitals team will play its first match in IPL 2026 with Lucknow Super Giants on 1 April. Before that, coach Hemang Badani said that opening partnerships are proving to be an important link in T20 cricket. This is the reason why Delhi is going to hand over the responsibility of opening to KL Rahul this time.

KL Rahul’s performance in IPL 2025

KL Rahul has been targeted for his average strike rate in T20 matches. But in recent times, he has improved his hitting ability. In IPL 2025, he scored 539 runs in 13 matches and the most important thing was that he scored runs at a strike rate of around 150. For their opening partner, Delhi has the option of Abhishek Porel, Pathum Nissanka and Prithvi Shav.

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