Former South African captain AB de Villiers has opined that Noor Ahmad’s form could be a cause of concern for the Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2026. The mystery spinner scalped 24 wickets in 14 matches at an average of 17 and an economy rate of 8.16 in IPL 2025.
However, the Afghanistan spinner wasn’t at his best in the SA20 and the T20 World Cup. Ahmad scalped five wickets in eight matches of SA20 at an average of 34.40 and an economy rate of 7.47.
AB said on his YouTube Channel, “They don’t have Jadeja and Ashwin from the past. Everyone thinks that any spinner will do well with CSK. But that’s not the case. You need to know what you are doing. Noor has been either out of form or batters are playing him better these days. I don’t know what’s happened, but even in the SA20 last year, no one could get bat on ball against him, but this time, he was quite expensive and cost them one or two games.”
“Even in the T20 World Cup, he didn’t fire like I thought he would. So perhaps the batters have figured him out. That might be a worry for them, to get the hang of Chepauk Stadium, as Ash and Jaddu had back in the day.”
The former RCB batter said SRH and CSK batters are almost similar, but the latter are smarter.
“CSK are very similar to SRH, but their batters are a little bit smarter than the SRH batters. The CSK batters can score 100s in a classy way. They don’t just have to go and force it. They are all thinkers of the game with all the shots,” he stated.
CSK will begin their IPL 2026 campaign against the inaugural champions Rajasthan Royals, at Guwahati.
