Last season, Sunrisers (SRH) reached the IPL decider by wowing fans with some massive totals on the back of the explosive batting of Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma. Nicknamed ‘Travishek’, they were the most exciting opening pair in 2024, and SRH duly retained both ahead of December’s mega auction.
The other players retained were captain Cummins, South African batter Heinrich Klaasen and Indian all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy.
That retention strategy made sense - the openers were excellent, Cummins is the captain, Klaasen is one of the best middle-order batsmen in white-ball cricket, and Nitish won the Emerging Player award last season.
It’s how Hyderabad chose to strengthen in the auction where they might have gone wrong. At face value, their key auction picks were very exciting. Mohammed Shami, Ishan Kishan and Adam Zampa were among those recruited - hang on, was the best team in the IPL shaping up here?
That’s what we all thought before the tournament started, and their first game seemed only to confirm that as they smashed Rajasthan Royals to all parts and then defended an almost record score of 286.
Since that win on the second day of the new season, however, they’ve nose-dived and lost four on the spin. In short, the problem is that the batting hasn’t come off the same way since, and they’ve posted totals of 190, 163, 120 (most shockingly) and 152.
At a glance, you look at this slide and think, that’s just what’s going to happen with this batting lineup; sometimes it’ll click, and sometimes it won’t. They’ll either get 250 or 150. It’s boom or bust.
Tellingly, however, playing that way wasn’t how they reached the final last season. Of course, we all remember their mammoth totals in 2024, but when you dig a little deeper, that’s only half the story of their success. Less than half, in fact.
Looking at their 2024 results, a few things jump out. First of all, they lost five times in the regular season, so all hope is not gone yet. Secondly, they only scored more than 200 on six occasions (out of 16). Of those six, they won five, while only three of those totals were genuinely massive scores over 250 or even 220.
If you boil that down, you could say they only won because of their insanely explosive batting in 2024 a few times. In fact, exactly one-third of the time.
It’s funny how certain things stick in the mind, isn’t it? Perhaps one of the reasons their few huge totals of 2024 persist in the memory is because they were all racked up in their first seven matches, with two coming in back-to-back outings.
Fast-forward to December, and what Sunrisers did in the auction was to forego strengthening their middle and lower order to add another explosive top-order player in Kishan. All their eggs in one basket, you could say.
In the pace bowling department, they let Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T. Natarajan go and brought in Shami, Harshal Patel and Simarjeet Singh. Here’s the thing about that approach: they’ve stocked up on strike bowlers and lost a couple of very good defensive bowlers in the process.
Zampa - one of their best defensive spinners in the world - hasn’t been playing in the recent matches as he’s been squeezed out of the four overseas slots they can use. Instead, they’ve opted for all-rounder Kamindu Mendis to lengthen their batting in the lower order.
In Kamindu, they have someone playing the role of last season's stalwarts Shahbaz Ahmed and Adbul Samad rolled up in one, but he is arguably worse equipped than either at the job required, not being a natural finisher and hardly being used as a bowler.
More broadly, the lack of defensive bowling in the side has meant there is more pressure on the top order to score big when SRH bat. That’s surely part of the rationale behind having three powerful top-order players. However, what happens when the batting doesn’t come off in the powerplay? Who's picking up the pieces?
Last season, SRH could call on the less aggressive Aiden Markram (or sometimes Mayank Agarwal) to play an anchoring role when needed. This season, they don’t have a player of that mould. This is not to say they must have an anchoring batter, but the fact that they had one last season took a bit of pressure off Travishek and gave them an insurance policy of sorts.
If you score 250 every match, it doesn’t matter if your bowling attack is quite expensive and your batting lineup is a bit short. But what happens if you don’t? Well, in the case of Sunrisers at the moment, the evidence suggests it means they lose with their current lineup.
Their season is not over, they can still find a way to click and go on a run of wins to clinch a playoff berth. However, they may need to rethink the structure of their team a little for that to happen.
For example, they could promote a more conventional batsman, such as Kamindu, up the order to fourth if they are going to persist with him in the side. Alternatively, they could drop Kamindu to squeeze Zampa back into the bowling attack to balance it, then find another way of rejigging the batting.
It’s not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater - they should back the top three to find some form. It’s more about tinkering with the lineup and finding a more balanced approach. The funny thing is that’s what made Sunrisers so good in the first place.
Sunrisers next play Punjab Kings on the 12th of April.
