A common thread between Adam Gilchrist and David Warner, apart from being Australians, is they have captained a Hyderabad-based franchise to IPL title in their second season. Another Australian, Pat Cummins, is also in his second season as Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper. It had all looked promising at the start—the hyper-aggressive brand of batting, and the reinforcements in the auction, all pointed towards another excellent season.
But last Sunday, against Gujarat Titans, the stands were half-empty with still quite a bit of game remaining. That was SRH’s fourth consecutive loss in a row. The ballistic Travishek combo, which was the key behind SRH winning most of their games last season, is yet to fire this season. Nitish Kumar Reddy after his promising last season and heroics in Australia in red-ball, has gone off the boil. Spin-killer Henrich Klaasen has lost his magic touch.
SRH have to make a quick turnaround if they are to progress deeper into the tournament. But head coach Daniel Vettori insists that they wouldn’t eschew their boom or bust approach with the bat. “I think when you know the reputation of the surface and our batsmen, then the burden is on the opposition bowling to really turn up and understand what they need to do. And so far, that’s what we’ve seen, albeit the one game, the first game that we had,” he observed.
He is convinced of the blueprint to succeed. “And I suppose we can reflect back on that first game and say, we know the blueprint. We don’t necessarily have to get 270-280, but when our batsmen are able to, I suppose, dominate the power play and set it up for our middle-order batsmen and then score on the board for our bowlers to defend, that’s normally when we’re at our best,” he added.
While the common perception is that their batting has not clicked, the bowling too, despite the addition of Mohammed Shami and Harshal Patel, have not posed any threat to the batting units. Cummins’s batting cameos down the order have been more memorable than his bowling spells thus far. The absence of a quality spinner had hurt them last season, but to redress the flaw, they brought Adam Zampa and Rahul Chahar. While the former has been ineffective, the latter continues to warm the bench.
Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper Pat Cummins in action. (Sportzpics for IPL)
“I hate to say it, but it’s probably been, like I said, it’s all been all three disciplines. They haven’t been able to click in a game. We look back to last year and our skills were putting big scores on and then sort of holding on for dear life with the ball. But we haven’t been able to put those big scores together,” Vettori explained.
But he believes in IPL’s scope for quick turnarounds. “But the good thing about the IPL is there are quick turnarounds. There are opportunities to do well. And there are individual performances within those games. So I think there’s still some confidence within the batting group. But it’s the collective that needs to stand up now,” Vettori analysed.
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Turnaround history
However, while things have not gone according to plan, IPL has had a history of quality teams starting slowly and going on to win trophies. Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians (more than once) and Gautam Gambhir’s Kolkata Knight Riders in 2014 won the titles after getting written off.
Cummins knows this all too well. His Australian team in the 2023 World Cup was understated after a couple of poor results in the first two games. But for Glenn Maxwell’s whirlwind knock against Afghanistan, they would have even failed to qualify for the knockouts. But they kept the cool and comfortably defeated India in the final.
At the Border Gavaskar Trophy after getting thrashed in the first Test, his turned it around. “It’s probably slow, glacial maybe, in terms of starts. I don’t think Pat’s ever panicked in his life,” Vettori had said after the loss to the Titans.
“I think I’m pretty similar. But we understand the ramifications of losing four in a row and how difficult it makes the season,” Vettori added. With nine games still remaining SRH would need at least seven wins to reach the playoffs without depending on other results. But if they sli on Saturday again, they would be entering the virtual knock-out territory in every league match.