The Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have had two phenomenal seasons in the last two years. This year, they did lose out on their core players due to the revamping IPL 2018 Auction but the management did a good job and have gotten good replacements for the missing stars. Just the last week, they received a jolt in form of David Warner. Alex Hales comes as a replacement but will he be able to fill the void left by David Warner or not remains to be seen.
Considering the young looking Sunrisers Hyderabad squad it can be said that there are a bunch of players whose role will be crucial if SRH wishes to lift the coveted trophy once again. If one needs to pick the X-factors for SRH for IPL 2018, then Hales and Rashid Khan need to be on the list as both of them don’t have immense IPL experience and because of the same reason, they can play a crucial role for the team. After going through some of the pages of the history of IPL, one can clearly say that the unknown faces have always been successful in making an impact and on that front Hales and Khan are the perfect match.
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In his career so far, Hales has played as many as 174 matches but unfortunately, he never gets to play an IPL match before despite the fact that he was picked by Mumbai Indians in 2015. The biggest irony, for him, is that he has always been included in an IPL squad as a replacement for another player. Now, this year he has been roped in as a replacement of Warner. In terms of batting, Hales has amassed as many as 4704 runs at an average of just under 30 but maintained a phenomenal strike rate of 140+ along with an individual highest score of 116*. After having a close look at his credentials, one can easily say that he can be a go-to batsman for the Deccan kings.
On the other hand, Rashid Khan has been making a name for himself from the last couple of years all-over the world. He is one of the most emerging cricketers in the world, who can still play in an under-19 team. In recent times, every T20 team wants him in their pool of players as he has the ability to deceive any batsman in the world, however, he has played just a few IPL games, in which most of the batsmen found it difficult to pick his googlies. leg-spinners always had an upper-hand in the T20 cricket and Khan is no exception but with its low trajectory, he somehow manages to beat the batsman. In his career of 91 T20 games, Rashid had managed to pick 135 wickets and maintained a phenomenal economy rate of below 6. He can be an asset to any team he plays for and now the cricket fans are looking forward to his watching him bowl in the IPL 2018.
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On their day, the duo can wreak havoc on any opposition and they have the ability to turn the match on its head only with their respective ability. Because of the fact that these two are pretty unknown to most of the IPL teams, Sunrisers Hyderabad can use them as a surprise package to win games.
Sunrisers Hyderabad IPL 2018 squad:
Alex Hales, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Manish Pandey, Rashid Khan, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddarth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Kane Williamson(C), Carlos Brathwaite, Shakib Al Hasan, Yusuf Pathan, Shreevats Goswami, Mohammad Nabi, Chris Jordan, Basil Thampi, T Natarajan, Sachin Baby, Bipul Sharma, Syed Mehdi Hasan, Ricky Bhui, Tanmay Agarwal
