Raghu Sharma finally got his Indian Premier League debut on May 2, 2026, when Mumbai Indians handed the 33-year-old his maiden cap before their match against Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. Hardik Pandya presented the cap, and Sharma was also named in the Impact Player list as Mumbai made one more change, bringing in Krish Bhagat for Ashwani Kumar.
The debut came at a difficult moment for Mumbai. They arrived ninth in the table with four points and a net run rate of -0.784 after eight matches, with only two wins from their first eight games and the memory of a 103-run defeat to Chennai Super Kings at the Wankhede Stadium still fresh. For Sharma, it marked the first IPL appearance after being retained by Mumbai even though he had not been used in the 2025 season.
Sharma, born in 1993 in Jalandhar, Punjab, has spent years building his case in domestic cricket. A right-arm leg-break bowler who also bats right-handed in the lower order, he represented Punjab and later Puducherry across formats, made his first-class debut in the 2017-18 Ranji Trophy season and has taken 57 wickets in 12 first-class matches, including five five-wicket hauls and three ten-wicket hauls.
His record has also been steady in the shorter formats. Sharma took 14 wickets in eight matches in the 2024-25 Vijay Hazare Trophy, has four wickets in four T20 matches since his debut in 2021 and carries an economy rate of eight in T20 cricket. Mumbai signed him in 2025 as a mid-season replacement for the injured Vignesh Puthur, after having earlier worked with him as a net bowler, and the move now gave him a chance on the IPL stage.
What makes Sharma’s debut notable is not just the cap, but the path. He arrived in the league as a relatively lesser-known but steadily rising domestic cricketer, and Mumbai’s decision to finally use him suggests they are still searching for answers in a season that has already gone badly off script.