RR, SRH begin campaign sans Smith and Warner
HYDERABAD: They were champions in 2016, crashed out in the eliminators last season and have made it to three qualifiers in the past five years. Yet, when one steps in the city a day before they play their season opener, there’s nothing about Sunrisers Hyderabad that catches one’s attention. No banners, no posters, no billboards anywhere. Even the rain Gods seem to be in a mood to play spoilsport with odd showers expected on Monday.
There’s plenty about actor Rana Daggubati though. Almost every other lane has him posing in a larger-than-life figure.
It was supposed to be a clash between David Warner and Steve Smith. Both Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals had not just marketed their promotions around them, but also picked their options at the auctions revolving around these two Australians. However, as luck would have it, both their poster boys are no longer available owing to the sanctions imposed on them in the ball-tampering saga by Cricket Australia and BCCI.
Thus, while Ajinkya Rahane will lead the charge for Royals, Kane Williamson will don the captain’s hat for Orange brigade. It will, thus, be an interesting season opener for both the camps given that they’ll start the campaign with what probably would have been their Plan B.
A major reason why SRH had made it to the semi-final stages last season was because of a power-packed opening pair of Warner and Shikhar Dhawan who had two century stands to their name.
This year, Williamson will be expected to fill in the shoes. Had Warner been around, chances of the Kiwi cricketer making the playing XI might have been bleak because of the cap on the number of foreign players in a side. Last season, he played just seven games scoring 256 runs.
It isn’t easy to break into this side.
With all-rounders like Carlos Brathwaite, Shakib Al-hasan, Yusuf Pathan and Mohammad Nabi, they have a packed middleorder besides the likes of Manish Pandey, Tanmay Agarwal and Deepak Hooda.
All of them can hit big and provide enough on the board for their bowlers.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar will lead the bowling attack and will have the likes of Siddharth Kaul and Sandeep Sharma to support him.
On the other hand, the Rajasthan Royals unit is a sort of a semireincarnation of Rising Pune Supergiant. The former champions have Ajinkya Rahane, Rahul Tripathi, Ben Stokes, Jaydev Unadkat and Ankit Sharma from the erstwhile Pune franchise.