Ayush Mhatre ruled out of IPL 2026 with a hamstring tear as CSK lose their leading run-scorer
Chennai Super Kings have lost their leading run-scorer for the rest of IPL 2026. Ayush Mhatre tore his left hamstring while batting against Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 18, and CSK batting coach Mike Hussey has confirmed the 18-year-old will miss the rest of the season. The initial medical assessment has set the rehabilitation window at six to twelve weeks, which takes him well past the final on May 31.
Mhatre had become the most important batter in a CSK side that has not looked anything like a playoff team. He was the only Chennai player past 200 runs in the tournament, with 201 runs from six innings at a strike rate close to 177, and was on 30 off 13 balls when he pulled up during a two in Hyderabad. He stayed at the crease for a couple more deliveries before being dismissed, and Hussey said afterwards that the injury had looked worse than it felt in the moment.
The moment it went wrong
It was a standard running call, a hard two turned by Ruturaj Gaikwad on the leg side, and Mhatre clutched the back of his left leg as he scrambled back into the crease. He signalled for the physio immediately, took treatment on the field, tried to carry on for one more ball at a hobble, and was out the next. CSK still finished with a competitive total but the chase came up ten runs short, and the conversation that night was already about how much worse the injury looked than the scorecard suggested.
A hamstring tear is not a week-to-week issue for a young opener. Hussey told reporters he did not yet know how bad it was after the game, and the scan results this week set the rehab window at six to twelve weeks. The lower end, six weeks, still rules him out of the league phase. The higher end keeps him out into July.
What CSK lose
Mhatre was the one player this season who looked like the future and the present at the same time. Two fifties in six innings, a strike rate above 175, and the kind of fearless top-order tempo that CSK had been missing for a while. Ruturaj Gaikwad has tried to anchor. Sam Curran and Shivam Dube have done work in the middle overs but neither is a like-for-like replacement at the top.
CSK are eighth in the standings with four points from six games and have already lost Nathan Ellis and Khaleel Ahmed to injury this season. Mhatre had been the one positive storyline inside a campaign that has otherwise offered very little. His runs were keeping CSK in games they had no business being in.
The Urvil Patel case
The obvious in-house replacement is Urvil Patel, who made 68 runs at a strike rate of 212.50 in three games for CSK last season. Patel plays the sort of clean, aggressive straight-bat hitting that Mhatre was giving them, and he is already on the bench. If CSK want a closer match to Mhatre's profile they will likely go with him in the playing eleven for Thursday's game against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede. The franchise has not yet named a long-term replacement from the overseas market, and with a six-week layoff at minimum the squad may get by without one.
The bigger question is not who opens on Thursday. It is whether an 18-year-old coming off his first serious professional injury can get back to where he was before the tear. Mhatre had been playing like a batter two seasons ahead of his age group. Hamstrings often come back fine. Confidence at that tempo is a different rehabilitation, and CSK will be watching both sides of it carefully.
Related Tags:
Cricket Updates
