At the T20 World Cup, Shivam Dube played the finisher’s role for India and he did well. It felt like he had added to his earlier skillset of being one of the country’s best spin-hitters.
He is performing the same role in IPL 2026. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) had no choice but to lean on his experience. The team had invested in youth. They needed their experienced players to do unfamiliar and/or difficult jobs.
Dube’s training for the game against Gujarat Titans (GT) looked very structured. The people giving him throwdowns focused on getting him ready for Kagiso Rabada, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj and Ashok Sharma. Everything was short. Everything was at the body. He combated those with ramps and pulls.
Rahul Chahar and Prashant Veer were also around and whenever they got the ball and Dube was on strike and he had the opportunity, he was step-hitting sixes all over the place. This is training. It is barely an indication of match-day intensity. But the comfort with which he faces spin is so striking. When CSK actively matched him up against them, they won a title. Three years later, things are a little different.
“When the impact player role came in, we used him just as that and he did that really well,” head coach Stephen Fleming said on Saturday. “And then teams obviously evolved, and India have used him differently, so he’s done a number of roles over the last couple of years.”
Dube played eight innings in the T20 World Cup. In half of those, he was coming out to bat after ten overs. In the final, there were just ten balls left. He faced eight of them and scored 26 not out. At this IPL, he has played seven innings. He’s come out to bat after ten overs in four of those. He has a strike rate of 142.22, which is the fourth-highest for CSK but has only five sixes, which Jamie Overton can match despite playing two fewer innings.
“It’s a little bit of weighing up who we’re playing,” Fleming said, “What sort of situation we get in, and there are other players as well. It’s not just all about when Dube can bat. There are other players who have good positions that they can come in and perform. So it’s just balancing out the team needs with the skillset that Dube has. He’s training beautifully, and I’m confident he’s not far away from having a big impact with the bat.”
The IPL took notice of Dube for the first time in 2018. On the eve of the auction, he hit five sixes in an over in a Ranji Trophy game and was picked up by Royal Challengers Bengaluru for 25 times his base price of INR 20 lakh. All that money was because he was a big strong boy who could play big strong shots.
RCB and later Rajasthan Royals saw him as a finisher. He struggled. CSK took him out of that role, out from under that pressure, and put him in situations where his reach and power could have the biggest impact, where he was on the favourable end of batter vs bowler match-ups. Dube responded by becoming the season’s second-best six-hitter.
Clearing the boundary is his calling card. But the frequency with which he does it has come down from every 7.54 balls in IPL 2023 to 18 in IPL 2026. GT will be a difficult team for Dube to correct this. They have a steady supply of tall fast bowlers who hit the deck and their lead spinner is among the best the format has ever seen.
In CSK’s last game against Mumbai Indians, Dube came up the order specifically to target their spinners. It didn’t pan out that way but still seems the best role for him. He has been unable to do it at this IPL because his team needs his experience down the order. Seven games remain in the season. Winning five might get CSK into the playoffs. Dube has time to turn things around.
