Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have decided that their batting will win their matches. Their plan for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season is simple: outbat the opposition. This worked last year and against Rajasthan Royals (RR) as well.
Delhi Capitals plans for SRH batters
But teams have started to adapt to this. They have started to play their field and bowl defensive lines, as though it were the death overs against them from the get-go. SRH’s encounter against the Delhi Capitals (DC) was a prime example of this.
Although they started poorly due to a run-out, DC had planned for each batter. Against Ishan Kishan in the powerplay, a fielder was placed at deep backward point. Mitchell Starc bowled it short and wide, and Kishan hit it straight to Tristian Stubbs.
Of course, not all is planned. The Abhishek Sharma run-out was not planned, nor was an ugly hoick from Nitish Kumar Reddy on the second ball of his innings. But that’s what you get. If the plan is to always attack, there will be times when you don’t even make 165. And that’s what happened in Vizag.
Travis Head seemed in good nick, but Starc knew his short-ball weakness. The opener doesn’t hold himself back, and that’s what got him out in the end.
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SRH’s approach, collapse & worst-case scenario
That aggressive approach looked to be what doomed them until Heinrich Klaasen and Aniket Verma saved them from a collapse of epic proportions. That may not have happened had Abhishek Porel not dropped Aniket when he was at 5 (7). The 23-year-old went on to score 74 runs from just 41 balls.
This is something that SRH must reflect upon. On flat surfaces, their approach holds up more often than not. But at Vizag, where Kuldeep Yadav and Vipraj Nigam were turning the ball and Starc too got some help from the surface, they needed to pick and choose when to attack.
This always-attack approach works wonders, but then when you fail, it looks equally terrible. Today wasn’t the worst for SRH. That would have happened if Aniket had been caught in the 6th over itself. But this is a line that they have to toe. Each batter they have from 1 to 7 possesses the ability to score 2 runs per ball.
But you don’t always need 240 runs on the board. In today’s match maybe even 200 would have been enough. But when you don’t trust your bowlers like SRH and think the best path to victory is bashing your way towards it, ever so often you’ll collapse and will have to settle for below-par totals.
