Hazlewood puts long layoff down to trying to rush back from injuries

The RCB quick says he has now "ticked off everything I possibly could" after returning to action in IPL 2026

Ashish Pant

Published: Apr 17, 2026, 4:14 PM

5:15

Is Hazlewood one of the best bowlers in the IPL?

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) fast bowler Josh Hazlewood has said that he aggravated his injuries in trying to rush back to competitive cricket, which ended up delaying his comeback. The takeaway: it is important to "respect injuries", particularly when a player is "on the wrong side of 30s".

Hazlewood, 35, has had a horror run with injuries for close to five months. He suffered a hamstring injury during a Sheffield Shield game in November last year. Then, during rehab, he had an Achilles/tendon issue followed by a torn calf, which made him miss the Ashes and the T20 World Cup. Hazlewood missed the initial part of IPL 2026 as well, but he is now back and feels he has "ticked off everything I possibly could" in trying to meet the demands and intensity of an IPL game.

"Any professional athlete who's been injured knows what it takes to get back. Some are harder than others. This time around, it was obviously quite a long time out of the game," Hazlewood said ahead of RCB's home game against Delhi Capitals (DC) on Saturday. "Just a few things crept in, I think mostly through probably trying to rush back a little bit, trying to make it to the fourth or fifth Ashes Test or the World Cup.

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"So you learn stuff every time you're injured and it's probably just about respecting that time frame or that return to play, the time that it takes to get back."

Hazlewood, who was critical to RCB's winning run last season, returned to the IPL against Rajasthan Royals. He picked up two wickets but also conceded 44 runs, with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Dhruv Jurel laying into him. He missed RCB's next game, against Mumbai Indians, which was planned, before making an impressive return for the Lucknow Super Giants game at home, where he picked up 1 for 20. Having made the mistake of trying to rush back to playing earlier, Hazlewood said that he gave himself extra sessions "just to fully recover and be ready".

"It's really hard to replicate that intensity of training. I even probably had a few more sessions here than what I probably felt that I needed to be ready," he said. "I probably felt four or five days before playing that Rajasthan game that I was ready and probably pushed hard to play against Chennai [Super Kings] here, but it was probably a good thing I just kept it and banked a few more sessions.

"For T20, your volume doesn't have to be huge at training, it's just reaching that intensity that the game demands out in the middle. That's probably the biggest thing to tick off at training in the last four weeks leading into this tournament, which I felt like I did as best I could. But once you're out there in the middle of a huge crowd, guys hitting you for six every ball, the intensity goes up a lot."

Hazlewood is one of the few bowlers in the T20 game who doesn't rely too much on variations and still targets the hard Test-match lengths, trying to rattle the batters with awkward bounce. He has also developed a delivery load-up where it looks like he is going to bowl an offcutter before he changes the grip and bowls an on-pace ball.

"I probably don't have a great slower ball, so it's just about trying to confuse the batter as best I can, whether that's showing it and bowling it or showing it and not bowling it. So it's a little bit of cat and mouse out there as it always is with the batsmen," Hazlewood said. "Some batters are probably watching closer than others and some are just reacting to what's coming down. So I guess that's another part of it, trying to read the batter and trying to stay one step ahead all of the time.

"Obviously, my strength is hitting the length, hitting it hard, not floating the ball up and making it hard for the batter to hit me off that length. That's my strength and the batters know that."

Hazlewood added that he was trying to learn new tricks from the rest of the RCB bowling attack, whom he likened to the Australian team, suggesting that "everyone just brings a little different skill set to the table".

"I think ours is a balanced attack; everyone's a little bit different," he said. "It feels like we've got every base covered and I like to learn off the other guys at training as well, so that's probably their time for trying things and in the game it's about nailing down your strengths."

'Pressure in an IPL game is on batters, not bowlers'

Scores in excess of 200 have become the norm in the IPL. This season alone, 200-plus scores have been breached 21 times in 23 completed games, with six-hitting touching a new high. As many as 424 sixes have been hit so far (before Friday's game) and while it seems the bowlers are having a hard time in the middle, Hazlewood has a different view of it.

"I think from a bowler's point of view, it almost takes the pressure off a little bit because the batsmen are expected to get off to good starts, they're expected to score big runs at the end, they're expected to get 230 runs now probably every T20 innings they play," he said. "So if you can get a batter two off six balls, the pressure that they're under in that situation is huge.

"You can just see a player almost melt out there in the middle, they're two off six and they just cannot find the gap, cannot find the boundary. I feel like that's the biggest pressure in the game now, as opposed to maybe when a bowler should have won the game when it's 40 off four overs at the end or something like that.

"The game's always changing. It's a nice challenge to have, I think. But, I feel like there's probably less pressure on the bowler these days with such big scores, if that sounds right."

Ashish Pant is a sub-editor with ESPNcricinfo

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