Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad is likely to change its skipper ahead of the upcoming season in 2024, Cricbuzz reported. Sunrisers Hyderabad may name Australia's Pat Cummins as their new skipper after the team’s miserable performance in the last season under Aiden Markram, the report said. The 17th edition of the Indian Premier League is scheduled to start from March 22.
It is important to note that under Cummins' captaincy, Australia defeated Team India in the finals of the World Test Championship and Cricket World Cup last year. Earlier, the IPL franchise splurged ₹20.50 crore on Cummins—making him the second most expensive player in the league's history—keeping his captaincy attributes in mind.
Sunrisers Hyderabad finished at the bottom of the points table last season after winning just four matches out of 14. The franchise has already made a big decision by parting ways with Brian Lara who was their head coach and replaced him with Daniel Vettori. The new head coach of the Sunrisers Hyderabad also works with Cummins in international cricket.
However, Markram recently led SunRisers Eastern Cape, a subsidiary of the franchise, to their second back-to-back SA20 league title.
Meanwhile, former New Zealand left-arm pacer James Franklin is likely to replace Dale Steyn as Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling coach in the upcoming IPL edition, reported PTI.
Steyn, a former South African fast bowler, who took over as Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling coach in 2022, has requested the franchise to give him a break for this season owing to personal reasons.
"We are in talks with him (Franklin) as Dale Steyn will not be available for this season," an IPL source told PTI on conditions of anonymity.
Franklin, however, has coaching experience with Durham in English county cricket and Pakistan Super League team Islamabad United as the assistant coach. At Sunrisers Hyderabad, Franklin will link up with his former teammate Vettori.
Ahead of the 2024 season, apart from Cummins, Sunrisers Hyderabad has signed two more overseas stars in Travis Head and Sri Lanka's star spinner Wanindu Hasaranga as it is going to be a tricky task for the team management to decide their four overseas options.
Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Pat Cummins, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan.
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