Hyderabad: Sunrisers Hyderabad's Rashid Khan celebrates fall of Jos Buttler's wicket during the eighth IPL 2019 match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on March 29, 2019. (Photo: IANS)
It seems like a bit of exaggeration where SRH bowlers went for bashing in the first two games in this season of IPL. But here is the question among the cricketing circles about SRH’s potentiality as a good bowling unit, indeed great unit. Let me tell you, among the six centuries scored in the last two seasons in IPL, five came against Sun Risers Hyderabad. In the last season, all centuries were scored against Sunrisers.
There are reasons. SRH are over-dependent on Rashid khan since his presence in the team. Indian pacers like Sandeep Sharma, Siddharth Kaul, and Basil Thampi are not consistent all the time. They still have Natarajan in the bench and other two good Indian pacers that increases the pressure on on-field pacers. There are many good teams who defended low scores such as Delhi, Mumbai, Punjab in the previous seasons other than SRH.
What made SRH special is their consistency in defending but most of the times hey failed to defend highest totals and to restrict the opposition to below par score. This leads to a new discussion. Rashid Khan seems like both boon or bane for SRH and even this Afghan specialist has a weakness of his inability to bowl left-hand batsmen efficiently compared to right-handers.
The best Indian pacer, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar has become vulnerable in the death overs which both himself and the team’s management need to sort out as quickly as possible. Even they are good at defending small totals which made them the best bowling unit in IPL, their failure in defending big totals and giving plenty of runs when bowled first can’t fit that tag line for this veteran team.
More ever, you can’t expect the best bowling team fail to defend 54 runs in the last three overs having their best bowler left with 2 overs. Let’s see whether Sun Risers Hyderabad will gain the glory back..!
