Royal Challengers Bengaluru are sitting in a relatively comfortable place in the race for the playoffs, but when the table is as crowded as it is promising to be this time around in IPL 2026, teams cannot risk letting that comfort become complacency. Despite a win over Mumbai Indians in Raipur this weekend, former Indian seamer Zaheer Khan has called for a host of changes to ensure that RCB remain fresh and competitive, having used a very limited core of players thus far in the season.
Particularly, speaking on Cricbuzz, Zaheer called for an extra seamer to be brought into the team. With Josh Hazlewood going through something of a lean patch, certainly by his standards, Zaheer suggested a return could be warranted for Jacob Duffy to supplement the Australian seamer and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
“The way that the Raipur pitch played, there might some uneven bounce, there might be more help for fast bowlers there. So, they can think of a change,” said Zaheer. “Now it remains to be seen whether they bring in an Indian pacer, or an overseas pacer. If they consider an overseas pacer, then the combination will be a bit different. But that won’t be too bad.”
Overseas batting stars told to make way
RCB do have some domestic bowling stocks – Abhinandan Singh started the tournament for them, while Mangesh Yadav is a highly-rated prospect they went after at this year’s auction. However, the change might see RCB bring in a different player bought at this auction, with Venkatesh Iyer capable of supplementing batting depth and the slightly off-colour Romario Shepherd or Jacob Bethell making way for Duffy instead.
“For that, you can either look towards Romario Shepherd or Jacob Bethell. If you can bring in a bowler like Jacob Duffy, then that improves your bowling a lot,” explained Zaheer. “For the batting, you have Venkatesh Iyer on the bench. So Suyash Sharma and one of the overseas players might have to sit out. Suyash’s form is also not that good, and there was not much in the pitch for him as well,” he concluded.
RCB are not a team who enjoy making too many changes to a settled team if they can help it, but with the race for the playoffs and the top two in particular tightening up, this is the best time in the season to try and experiment with the options they have at hand. Whether Zaheer’s former franchise will pull the trigger against KKR in Raipur might come down to the faith they have in their bench strength.