Former India player Irfan Pathan has raised questions on Sunrisers Hyderabad’s decision to appoint Australian pace bowler Pat Cummins as their new captain for the IPL 2024. Cummins replaced Aiden Markram as SRH skipper, who had a poor season last year. However, with SRH’s sister team, the Sunrisers Eastern Cape, Markram tasted success, having led them to back-to-back SA20 titles in 2023 and 2024 as well.
On the other hand, SRH finished last in the 2023 season, with only four wins in 14 league matches, under Markram. While he led Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the inaugural SA20 title this year, he was replaced as the SRH captaincy, but he is still in the squad. For the past three years, the SRH leadership has been changing which started with the 2021 saga, when Australian batter David Warner, who led the SRH to its only title win in 2016 and spent six years with the team, was fired in the middle of the season as well.
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On the other hand, Pat Cummins has earlier played for the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Delhi Daredevils (now the Delhi Capitals), but this will be his first time leading an IPL team as well.
“When you talk about leadership, you wouldn’t want to think beyond Cummins ideally. Australia just won the World Cup under him; he’s performed really well in the last one and a half years. But the problem is that Cummins will look nice overall. However, when it comes to T20 leadership, there’s nothing. His performance isn’t the greatest in T20 cricket and his IPL numbers aren’t decent either,” Pathan said on Star Sports. “So there will be a challenge. What is SRH thinking? They’ve made a big move here. If Cummins is made captain, what about Markram? You gave him captaincy just for one year, so wouldn’t you want to back him? That is a big question.”
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“If they both play, [Wanindu] Hasaranga will struggle to make his place in the team. Even Marco Jansen could sit out because there are too many overseas players. So there are a lot of issues. SRH need to figure out what they have to do because even Klaasen is an overseas player. And I want personally that Hasaranga becomes part of that Playing XI. Forget leadership, how will Cummins perform as a bowler? That remains to be seen,” Irfan Pathan concluded.
