After briefly stumbling in the middle of the IPL 2020 group stage, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) bounced back at the end of it to reach the play-offs, eventually bowing out in the second Qualifier match – can their playing XI take them all the way this year?
There haven’t been a great deal of personnel changes in the Sunrisers set-up, with just three signings made in the auction: in came Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Jagadeesha Suchith. Mitchell Marsh later dropped out of the tournament for personal reasons, with England opener Jason Roy brought in as a replacement.
Major changes we could see
In all honesty, it seems unlikely that we’ll see too many changes in the first-choice XI that came to impress at the back-end of the 2020 season. Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s return from injury is a welcome one, however, and he will be a key man for the side on the back of some stellar performances for India in their limited-overs series against England.
One area Sunrisers struggled to pin down was with their second spinner behind Rashid Khan, and Suchith enters the conversation in that spot, contesting with the likes of Abishek Sharma and Shahbaz Nadeem.
READ SUNRISERS HYDERABAD TEAM PREVIEW
SRH squad for IPL 2021
David Warner (c), Rashid Khan, Wriddhiman Saha, Khaleel Ahmed, Abdul Samad, Sandeep Sharma, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Shreevats Goswami, Kedar Jadhav, Mohammad Nabi, Abishek Sharma, Basil Thampi, Jason Roy, Jason Holder, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jagadeesha Sunith, Virat Singh, T Natarajan, Kane Williamson, Shahbaz Nadeem, Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar, Siddharth Kaul, Priyam Garg
Sunrisers Hyderabad likely first-choice playing XI
David Warner, Wridhimann Saha, Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Jason Holder, Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Sandeep Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, T Natarajan
