Chennai Super Kings (CSK) defeated their arch-rival Mumbai Indians (MI) in their second faceoff of this Indian Premier League (IPL) season 2026, where the men in yellow defeated Mumbai by eight wickets. First, CSK didn't let MI post a big total, restricting them to a moderate score of 159 runs, and then chased down the score in 18.1 runs.
CSK's bowling, led by Anshul Kamboj, played a crucial role in almost every game they have won this season, so much so that Kamboj currently holds second place in the purple cap leaderboard with 17 wickets. Impressed by his bowling, former MI pacer Mitchell McClenaghan has lauded the CSK speedster for his accuracy this season.
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Mitchell McClenaghan, impressed by Anshul Kamboj's precision
Praising Kamboj for hitting the accurate lengths, McClenaghan compared him to Royal Challengers Bengaluru's Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and further put him in the same category as Mohammed Siraj and Kagiso Rabada.
"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," McClenaghan said via ESPN Cricinfo.
Kamboj's IPL 2026 stats
Kamboj has featured in nine games for CSK in 2026 and has taken 17 wickets at an impressive average of 15.82 while boasting an economy rate of 8.79, that too after bowling high-pressure overs in death. In a three-season-old IPL career the 25 year old has taken 27 wickets so far and has become a crucial part of CSK's bowling attack