Anshul Kamboj has been one of the stories of IPL 2026. Mumbai Indians (MI) didn’t quite see his worth when they had him in their line-up in IPL 2024. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) saw the wicket-taking ability, and after picking up eight wickets in eight games in 2025, Kamboj hasn’t stopped picking up wickets this season: he is up there at the top of the Purple Cap table, the same as Bhuvneshwar Kumar at 17 strikes but behind on economy rate, and Ambati Rayudu pointed to his ability to bowl in all phases as being the reason he is “quite special”.
“I think his capability of bowling in the powerplay, in the middle, as well as in the death – when you can do these three, I think you are among the top-five bowlers who have ever played IPL, because most of them can’t do all three,” Rayudu said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut after Kamboj returned 3 for 32 in CSK’s win over MI on Saturday night. “We can name people on our fingers who can do these three things and do them brilliantly. His death bowling has improved quite a bit and especially that angle from around the stumps and his nailing of those yorkers, it’s quite impressive. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
Fast bowlers going around the wicket and angling the ball across right-hand batters, and spearing the yorkers in along the way, has been one of the plans for not just CSK, but Super Kings teams in other leagues for a while now.
“You can put that down to the old CSK blueprint, when you had [Dwayne] Bravo and obviously Eric Simons [the bowling coach] is still there. They really like guys to come around the wicket,” Mitchell McClenaghan, the former New Zealand and MI quick, said. “The point I’m trying to make is that probably, previous to coming to CSK, I don’t think he had a real plan or idea of what he wanted to do at the death. And so I think he’s found something.
“Yes, it may not be successful all the time in all conditions. You definitely need a bigger side [of the ground] and you need to know that your field is on the off side. But I think that he’s found a plan that works for him. He can execute it and it’s making him very effective, turns [him] into that three-phase bowler.”
For McClenaghan, along with the yorker and that around-the-wicket angle, the key is Kamboj’s ability to hit the difficult lengths even though he isn’t particularly fast.
“What I like the most about him, and about the guys who have been successful in this IPL so far, [is that] they have got the highest percentage of being able to hit that six-to-eight-metre length with the new ball and he does that,” McClenaghan said. “You’ve got Josh Hazlewood, you’ve got [Mohammed] Siraj, you’ve got [Kagiso] Rabada, you’ve got Bhuvi [Bhuvneshwar], and Kamboj is in that bracket as well. And you can see that late little seam movement either way, which is very difficult to be able to deal with at the top.”
Kamboj’s prolific wicket-taking might have caught some observers by surprise, but CSK knew what to expect.
“It’s not a surprise for us. Last year he was really good. He’s worked hard with Eric Simons around the concept of death bowling and he has worked during the year to master that,” CSK head coach Stephen Fleming said at the press conference after the game. “I think you’ve seen some fine performances – both in the reason why and what he’s doing, and in the ability to execute under pressure. And that’s two really key components at the death. All we really needed was evidence and again a lot of the work we’ve done pre-season and now it is understanding angles and what he can and can’t do from certain sides of the wicket and it’s very impressive.”
Originally a hit-the-deck seamer from Haryana, Kamboj, now 25, made headlines when he picked up all ten wickets in a Ranji Trophy innings in November 2024. He made the India Test squad in the summer of 2025, earned his Test cap at Old Trafford, but didn’t do well enough to be a regular contender for India’s fast-bowling slots. At the IPL too, he remained under the radar somewhat. Till now.
But impressed as Rayudu is, he expect Kamboj to continue evolving to remain “lethal”.
“He’s been doing that without having a notable slow ball,” Rayudu said. “He still has enough room for improvement or develop another delivery that will make him even more lethal in any bowling side. His execution is very, very good. Spot on. He cannot miss with the kind of bowling that he does. He cannot err in length and he has not been [erring]. So that’s testament to his consistency and his action.
“[But] he cannot just restrict himself to doing just that. So he still needs to improve his slower ball, still needs to know how to bowl from over the stumps when things are not working.”
For the moment, though, 17 wickets in nine games, with just the one wicketless outing, suggests whatever he is doing is working.
