Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals offer glimpse into the future after losing Australian duo
Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Rajasthan Royals by nine wickets on Monday night
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Your support makes all the difference.In between overs, the DJ at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad played a muzak version of Nik Kershaw’s 1984 hit, The Riddle. It was rather apt, too, given how the two teams, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals, had to rip up plan A and come up with other ones less than a fortnight before the Indian Premier League (IPL) began.
Until that calamitous afternoon in Cape Town, when Cameron Bancroft decided to stuff a small square of sandpaper down his trousers – in full view of dozens of HD cameras – and then lie flagrantly about it, Steve Smith was supposed to lead Rajasthan and David Warner Hyderabad. Both were to be paid 125 million Rupees for the hardship.
Once Cricket Australia decided to ban them for a year, those contracts were worth as much as the confetti that rains down on the IPL winners each May. Rajasthan replaced Smith with Heinrich Klaasen, the hard-hitting South African wicketkeeper, and appointed Ajinkya Rahane as captain. Hyderabad drafted in Alex Hales, and gave the reins to Kane Williamson, the only non-Indian captain in the IPL.
It was a measure of how hard both will be to replace that neither Klaasen nor Hales got a game on Monday night. Smith had an excellent season for the now-disbanded Pune franchise in 2017 – 472 runs at a strike-rate of 122 – but when you think of the leading practitioners in the shortest format, his wouldn’t be one of the first names summoned up.
That isn’t true of Warner, who is a bonafide T20 legend. In each of the last four IPL seasons, as Hyderabad established themselves as a team to be feared, Warner scored more than 500 runs at a strike-rate in excess of 140. In 2016, when they won the title seeing off Royal Challengers Bangalore on their turf, Warner aggregated 848 while striking at a remarkable 151.42. If not for Virat Kohli’s monumental season (973 runs), it would have been a single-season record.
Warner also led his side with verve and imagination. Under his leadership, Bhuvneshwar Kumar became the most consistent new-ball bowler in the league. And in 2017, Warner handled Rashid Khan superbly as he became the first Associate player to establish himself as an IPL star. And he did all this without the petulant behaviour that he was tasked with when taking the field in the baggy green cap.
As it turned out, it was the Smith-shaped void that was harder to fill. In Warner’s absence, his former charges did just fine with Hyderabad. The new recruits, the beanpole-like Billy Stanlake and Shakib Al Hasan, who once starred for Kolkata Knight Riders, bedded in just fine, while Bhuvneshwar and Rashid did what they always do. But the pick of the bunch was Siddharth Kaul, Kohli’s teammate when India won the Under-19 World Cup (2008) and someone Warner had reposed considerable faith in.
Rajasthan didn’t pick Jofra Archer, recovering from a side strain picked up in the Pakistan Super League, and the two England stars they have built their squad around were put through the wringer by Rashid. It was Stanlake that got the wicket of Ben Stokes, caught at long-on after Williamson juggled the ball around, but by then he had already been flummoxed by Rashid’s slider.
Jos Buttler didn’t survive the Afghan examination, inside-edging a googly that he couldn’t get to grips with. By then, Rashid had already contributed significantly to Rajasthan’s slide to 125 for 9, taking two stunning catches on the run to dismiss Rahane and Sanju Samson, who top scored with 49. Rashid may have picked up only one wicket, but he bounced around the field with the enthusiasm and presence we once associated with a blond, Australian leg-spinner.
Stokes, the most expensive buy at the auction in January, didn’t exactly redeem himself with the ball either. Shikhar Dhawan, dropped by Rahane at slip before he had scored, carted him for four 4s in two overs as Hyderabad raced past the target in just 15.5 overs.
Back in 2008, when Shane Warne led them to the title in the inaugural season, Rajasthan were hammered by nine wickets in their opening game. After this chastening defeat, they will need Stokes, Buttler and a fit-again Archer to step up if this is to be dismissed as a similar blip, and not a sign of things to come.
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