IPL Auction 2022: After off-season churn, Sunrisers Hyderabad desperately need good recruitment

If you look at the Indian Premier League standings over the last six years, you will find that Sunrisers Hyderabad have been among the most consistent teams in the tournament. After emerging as champions in 2016, they also reached the playoffs in the next four seasons.

However, such was their downfall in IPL 2021 that going into the next season, there is a definite cause for concern if you’re an SRH fan.

In IPL 2021, the Sunrisers lost eight of their first nine games and three of their last four games to finish the league at the bottom of the table with six points from 14 games. The season was divided into halves due to Covid-19 and Hyderabad were poor in both.

One of the big talking points around SRH was, of course, the case of David Warner. The Australian was removed as captain after the team lost five of their first six games and replaced by Kane Williamson. To make matters worse, Warner was benched for the last few games despite the team continuing to struggle. Eventually, he wasn’t retained by the franchise for the upcoming season.

But there was a lot more that went wrong for Hyderabad in IPL 2021. Their top run-scorer was Manish Pandey, who finished at No 21 on the list for the overall highest run-scorers in the season. In terms of bowling, Rashid Khan was seventh on the list of highest wicket-takers, Jason Holder was next in 11th position and the third SRH bowler was Siddarth Kaul in 37th position.

With not a single player being close to the best performers of the season, Sunrisers Hyderabad were always going to face a major struggle.

Now, heading into the mega IPL 2022 auction, SRH have retained three players – Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad and Umran Malik. While Williamson is a proven performer in international cricket and a stellar leader, the other retained players have a lot riding on their young shoulders.

Every team at the auction this time around has to nearly build from scratch but when it comes to SRH, it seems they have that extra bit to do because of the overall lack of experience in their retained players. This is an area that has troubled them in the past, with too much responsibility put on young middle order batters, and the franchise would want to ensure that isn’t the case going forward.

Recent auction history: Hit or miss?

The Sunrisers spent Rs 2 crore on Kedar Jadhav and Rs 1.5 crore on Mujeeb Ur Rahman for IPL 2021 but the moves didn’t quite work. While the senior India batter scored just 55 runs in six matches, the Afghan spinner featured in just one game.

In the IPL 2020 auction, SRH had brought in seven players – Abdul Samad (uncapped), Fabian Allen, Mitchell Marsh, Priyam Garg (uncapped), Sandeep Bavanaka (uncapped), Sanjay Yadav (uncapped), and Virat Singh (uncapped).

The franchise has invested heavily in young talents over the past few years and while there is merit to that approach, there is no denying that the lack of experience cost them in crucial moments. Especially in IPL 2021, the Sunrisers struggled to win key moments and missed having established players to bolster their middle order.

Any off-season changes since IPL 2021?

Sunrisers Hyderabad announced some major changes to their coaching staff in December 2021. While Tom Moody was retained as head coach and Muttiah Muralitharan as the strategy and spin bowling coach, there were four significant additions.

West Indies legend Brian Lara was roped in as the batting coach, South Africa great Dale Steyn was signed as the fast bowling coach, Simon Katich as the assistant coach, and Hemang Badani as the fielding coach and scout. VVS Laxman, of course, has now moved on to the National Cricket Academy.

The Orange Army will have immense experience in the dugout in IPL 2022 and they will hope the think tank can assemble a formidable mix of players in the auction. They have in the past been known for shrewd auction work, they need to find that mojo back after plenty of off-season churn.

Who’s saying what

Brian Lara: “You have got to fill a team. You want to get the best players in the best positions, but you can’t. There are nine other franchises who want to come out with the best team possible. For us, it’s about getting the right structure and getting roles filled with different options that we have in the IPL auctions and see what are the best players that we can get for the sort of budget that we have. It’s going to be a dynamic auction. It’s one of those that comes around only every three years. The teams have got money in their hands and they want to spend it on their best players.”