The Sunrisers Hyderabad SRH have not reached the playoffs in the last two Indian Premier League seasons, and have, one year after another, released their last two captains: David Warner followed by Kane Williamson.
Under the New Zealander, Hyderabad based franchise finished 8th in the 10-team tournament last year and let Williamson go after the Kiwi star also struggled with the bat in the shortest format last year.
SRH went in the IPL 2023 auction with the largest purse of all teams and spent a major chunk on England sensation Harry Brook, who was part of England’s T20 World Cup-winning side. They also acquired a few other experienced T20 players like Mayank Agarwal, Akeal Hosein, and Adil Rashid.
Sunrisers Hyderabad now boasts of a powerful batting line-up filled with a number of T20 stars, and that, to go with their strong bowling unit, the 2016 champions can again dream of lifting the Indian League trophy in IPL 2023.
Here are two of SRH’s most destructive batters in IPL 2023:
Rahul Tripathi
His more than impressive strike rate also got him a call-up to the Indian team and later debuted in the side at number 3 when Kohli was rested from T20Is. In 5 T20Is for India, Tripathi has played two blockbuster knocks: 35(16) vs Sri Lanka and 44 (22) vs New Zealand, sealing his place in the side for the later matches.
Among batsmen who have scored over 800 runs in the last two IPL seasons, Rahul Tripathi has the third-highest strike rate of 148, only behind Maxwell and Buttler.
Glenn Phillips
He was being benched for the entire Indian Premier League 2022 season for Sunrisers Hyderabad was a massive under-utilization of one of the best T20 batters in the world.
New Zealand Batsmen, who has been retained by Sunrisers, might get his chance in the Premier League 2023 – he got to play in only 3 matches in 2021 for RR – with Kane Williamson and Nicholas Pooran now released. Phillips is likely to play as a wicket-keeper batter for Hyderabad ahead of Heinrich Klaasen.
This will give him the opportunities to light up the Indian Premier League as he lit up the T20 World Cup last year in Australia, where he averaged 40 and struck at 158 with one century and one fifty.
He was a thrilling 2022 with the bat in the shortest format: in 21 T20Is in 2022, He averaged 44 with a strike rate of 156 with 6 fifties and a century in the T20 WC, doing the demolishing job for the Kiwis in the middle and death-overs in T20Is.
Sunrisers Hyderabad will be expecting the 26-year-old to replicate his T20I success in the Indian League 2023 and beyond.
IPL 2023 Sunrisers Hyderabad full squad:
Aiden Markram (C), Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Marco Jansen, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Harry Brook, Mayank Agarwal, Heinrich Klaasen, Adil Rashid, Mayank Markande, Vivrant Sharma, Samarth Vyas, Sanvir Singh, Upendra Singh Yadav, Mayank Dagar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Akeal Hosein, Anmolpreet Singh
