The Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise  Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) team since its inception in 2013 has always been one of the toughest teams to beat. In 2016, David Warner took the leadership responsibilities for SRh and since then there has been no looking back for the team as they have got brilliant support from the coaches and mentors like Tom Moody and VVS Laxman, who has helped the Deccan region team to come out on the top in the last two years specifically. This year, the team will be out again with a realistic chance of claiming the coveted IPL trophy.

Despite the fact that SRH will have the services of match-winning players like Shikhar Dhawa, David Warner, Wriddhiman Saha, Manish Pandey, Deepak Hooda, Carlos Brathwaite, Kane Williamson, Yusuf Pathan, etc. There are certain players in comparison to their squad from the last season of IPL, who will be completely be missed not only in terms of performance but also in terms of experience and the kind of variety they had brought to the table.

Also read: IPL 2018 Preview: Sunrisers Hyderabad – The Deccan King

In comparison with last year’s squad of SRH players like Mustafizur Rahaman, Barinder Sran, Ashish Nehra, Mohammed Siraj, Yuvraj Singh, Ben cutting will be missed by the Hyderabad team management. Making the most of the known conditions, SRH team converted its home venue into their den and won six out of its seven matches played in Hyderabad and the above-stated players played a crucial role in most of those wins in any way possible. 

SRH will be poorer with the loss of Nehra and Mustafizur, two excellent bowlers to start and finish the game. Last year, Nehra was mostly injured during the IPL matches, while Mustafizur was busy with his international duties but it was Barinder Sran and Mohammed Siraj, who fill in the boots of the specialist pacers and helped their team to win games not only at home but away as well.

In the winning campaign of SRH, there is no doubt about the fact that along with Warner it was some glorifying bowling spells from Nehra and Mustafizur which took the Deccan team into the finals and end up lifting the trophy in the final as well. Talking about the 2016 IPL final, one can’t forget the match-winning all-around performance of Ben Cutting. 

Cutting played a knock of 15-ball 39 and took the momentum from the Royal Challengers Banglore (RCB) in the final by helping his team to set a huge target of 209. Then again in the second innings, he bowled a brilliant spell of 2/25 as he picked crucial wickets of Chris Gayle and KL Rahul which stopped the flow of runs for RCB (In 2018, Ben will play for them). It was Sran who dismissed RCB skipper Virat Kohli (highest-scorer of 2016) in the finals.

Also read: Ricky Bhui reveals a rare tradition of SRH

Although Yuvraj Singh has not been in his prime form in recent times, but, for SRH he has played a bunch of match-winning knocks and taken some crucial catches in the field which shifted the momentum in his teams favor.

Now, the questions arise is whether the SRH team management has been successful in finding apt replacements of these missing cogs from the team and the answer to that will be, yes up to some extent they have found the replacements. Let’s have a look at it:

Yuvraj Singh – Yusuf Pathan

Ben Cutting –  Carlos Brathwaite

Mustafizur Rahman – T Natarajan

Barinder Sran – Khaleel Ahmed

Mohammed Siraj – Basil Thampi 

Ashish Nehra – no replacement found for Nehraji!

Squad fo Sunrisers Hyderabad for IPL 2018:

David Warner (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Manish Pandey, Rashid Khan, Shikhar Dhawan, Wriddhiman Saha, Siddarth Kaul, Deepak Hooda, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Kane Williamson, 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