IPL Sunrisers Hyderabad Preview: SRH bet on youth as they look to rebuild after last year’s disappointment

Owner: SUN TV Network

Best Performance: Winners 2016

2021 Performance: Finished eighth

SQUAD
Kane Williamson (c), Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Saurabh Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi

Players’ Availability
Availability of the players is not a concern but injury to the players is. Captain Kane Williamson has long-standing elbow issues. Bhuvneshwar Kumar have been battling one injury or the other for the last couple of years. Washington Sundar is coming back from a hamstring injury he sustained during the ODI series against West Indies in February. T Natarajan, their yorker specialist, is making a comeback after a long absence due to his knee troubles.

Batting
Most of the things went wrong for them last year, both on the field and off it. While the team lost 11 out of 14 matches, David Warner lost his captaincy and place in the side. Coach Trevor Baylis exited and there were several changes in the coaching staff. This year has already seen a controversy with assistant coach Simon Katich resigning right after the auction.

At the mega auction, they bet their money on youngsters, especially Indians, and will look to establish a new model that could help them avoid last year’s disappointment. They retained Abdul Samad and brought back Priyam Garg and Abhishek Sharma. They also picked Washington Sundar in the auction.

Rahul Tripathi was a good pick for them. He is underrated but an experienced IPL hand. He will most likely open the innings for them and in the absence of an experienced regular opener, they might use Abhishek Sharma at the top. Abhishek provides a left-hand option and bats aggressively.

Middle-order responsibilities will be shared by Williamson, Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram. But they will have to depend on young Samad and Sundar in the death overs, which doesn’t inspire confidence. So, one of the middle-order trio must try and bat till the end.

They have options, though. If they go with an all-Indian bowling attack, which they can, hard-hitting Glenn Phillips can be used to encash the last quarter of the innings. And he can keep wickets and bowl off-spin.

Bowling
On the bowling side, SRH are pace heavy. They have new-ball specialist Bhuvneshwar Kumar. He can bowl in any phase of the game but very few match his new-ball skills. They have Umran Malik’s pace to hustle up the opposition. And then the yorker king T Natarajan to take care of the death overs. The tall and talented Marco Jansen is their left-arm option. Sean Abbott is a back-up option. Romario Shepherd gives them the pace-allrounder option.

But the exit of Rashid Khan, the best T20 bowler in the world, has created a void in their spin department. They have signed Shreyas Gopal, leg-spinner from Karnataka, but he is nowhere near Rashid’s quality. Sundar (off-spin) and Abhishek (left-arm spin) would share the spin responsibilities.

Potential Playing XI
1. Rahul Tripathi, 2. Abhishek Sharma, 3. Kane Williamson, 4. Nicholas Pooran (wk), 5. Aiden Markram/Glenn Phillips, 6. Abdul Samad, 7. Washington Sundar, 8. Marco Jansen, 9. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10. T Natarajan, 11. Umran Malik