SRH’s plan B Nitish Kumar Reddy has not worked in IPL 2025
There is something wrong with Nitish Kumar Reddy in this IPL. After seven matches, he has scored 131 runs at an average of 21.83 and a painful strike rate of 113.91 and is yet to score a half-century. There were a few sparks in the season early on, but as the Sunrisers Hyderabad’s batting collectively started to struggle, his batting too started to fade away.
While trying to stabilise the innings after early wickets, this season, he has often gone into his shell. The innings against the Mumbai Indians (19 off 21 balls) and the Gujarat Titans (31 off 34 balls) lacked the freedom of a usual Nitish innings, but he had the responsibility on his shoulders of taking SRH to a par total. His curbing of attacking instinct through the middle overs has also coincided with SRH’s altered mantra of adapting to the conditions and playing accordingly, instead of a hyper-aggressive brand of cricket after a few poor batting collapses early in the season.
However, it also needs to be noted that batting at four in T20 is not the easiest role going around in T20 cricket. In the ongoing IPL and apart from the likes of Suryakumar Yadav (Mumbai Indians), Rajat Patidar (Royal Challengers Bengaluru) and KL Rahul (Delhi Capitals), not many have been able to deliver as per the team’s needs this season consently.
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On their days, like it happened against the Punjab Kings and Rajasthan Royals, when the top order clicks, SRH can outpower any batting lineup but the problem is when it failed like it did in the five of the remaining seven games where SRH’s middle-order lacked enough power-supply to put on par totals on the board. Nitish was supposed to be the crisis man, but hasn’t been able to do the job yet.
What will an ideal Nitish rebuilding innings look like, as we have seen in the past? Mixing caution with aggression. He ensures he stitches a partnership with other players. Some hard running between the wickets through the middle phase. He would not play any high-risk percentage shot through these overs, he also makes sure the bowler won’t dictate terms either, as with his unique skills to hit behind the square of the wicket. It’s also his go-to shot, which upsets the rhythm of the bowlers. After the foundation is taken care of in the middle phase, he unleashes his long levers to deposit some gigantic sixes all around the ground.
It is not just the range of shots that came into limelight at just 21 years, he already had the maturity to build innings and the temperament to ride out the tough passages of play. There was a particular instance last season when Nitish pulled the team out of trouble, against the Rajasthan Royals, where he managed to score 76*(42) balls, when the team was in a bit of a pickle, at 35/2. That innings too required a bit of rebuilding in the middle overs, and laying the platform for batters to follow. But that day innings progressed organically and was free-flowing..
These abilities have also earned Nitish an Indian call soon, and he got to bat in the middle-order against Bangladesh in T20IS last October, despite having a mediocre domestic record with the bat representing Visakhapatanam.Story continues below this ad
He won the Man of the Match against Bangladesh in Delhi for his 74 off 34 with the bat and 2/23 with the ball. He later went to Australia, although in red-ball cricket, he scored a sublime 100 against Australia in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne. Everything pointed towards him having a successful season for SRH. But the blinds have come down this IPL. While Nitish has shown he has the game to adapt to either situation, it is high time he starts converting promise into performances for SRH this season.
