Sunil Gavaskar: SRH batting was like youngsters in their fancy sports cars | Ipl News

With last year’s IPL finals Sunrisers Hyderabad languishing at the bottom of the table with just one win from four matches, batting great Sunil Gavaskar has compared the franchise batsmen to that of fancy cars. Last season when they made the finals, where they lost to Kolkata Knight Riders, SRH’s approach with the bat was a huge talking point as they threatened to breach the 300-run total.
Ahead of this edition, the expectations were once again sky high as apart from retaining the core, they also added Ishan Kishan to the mix. But the story so far in this season has been hit or miss with the franchise’s aggressive approach with the bat bringing downfall.
“There is something about speed, isn’t there? Speed thrills but also sometimes kills,” Gavaskar in his Sportstar column. “Last year, the Sunrisers Hyderabad, with their openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma, set up a new template for how to bat in the Powerplay as well as beyond. They batted at breakneck speed, taking the opposition completely surprise, and as a result, their team came very close to crossing the 300-run mark in the IPL. Their batting was like youngsters in their fancy sports cars going through traffic red lights and not being caught,” he wrote.
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This time, SRH hasn’t been able to repeat it with opposition teams coming up with well deceived plans to strangle them. In each of their last four matches, the slower deliveries have troubled the SRH batsmen and Gavaskar said they have to find a new way to go about their batting.
“This year, in the first match, SRH went through the red light without being caught. But just as the traffic police get smarter and capture those offending cars, so too have the bowlers of IPL teams started to put the brakes on not just SRH but also other teams trying to emulate them. SRH have now, at the time of writing, lost four consecutive matches, where the top three have not made much of a contribution.
Bowling slower deliveries and mixing them with the odd one into the ribcage of the batters has resulted in them holing out to the fielder at deep square-leg and being dismissed in the Powerplay itself. The batters will certainly have to find a new way to try and breach the red lights once again,” he added.