Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag was dissatisfied with the performance of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) speedster Umran Malik in the IPL 2023 season. Umran was pulled from the team after taking only five wickets in seven games with an economy rate of 10.35.
He got a chance to end the season well against Mumbai Indians (MI) on Sunday but he failed to do so. He got blasted for 41 runs in three overs and had no impact on the game.
In an interview with Cricbuzz after the game, Virender Sehwag questioned Umran Malik’s efforts behind the scenes with South African icon and SRH bowling coach Dale Steyn. He stated:
““Umran Malik’s problem is that he keeps shuffling his length. He doesn’t have the experience yet. He might have worked a lot with Dale Steyn, but he hasn’t really got the idea of his length. Despite working with Steyn for so long and learning under him, he’s doing the same mistakes that he did last year.”
Manoj Tiwary, a veteran Bengal cricketer, was also present in the meeting and commented on SRH skipper Aiden Markram’s comments about Umran Malik’s absence in the previous game. He went on to say:
Umran didn’t play enough games too so it’s difficult to say if he was rusty. But when your captain says at the toss that even he doesn’t have an idea of what’s going on with your selection, it is bound to hurt your self-confidence. He needs to keep a simple field and bowl back of a length. That’s nowhere to be seen.”
Virender Sehwag on SRH’s captaincy options
Virender Sehwag also stated that only an experienced Indian player should be a leading choice for SRH. He cited Graeme Smith, who captained South Africa at the age of 23, and also mentioned how the Kolkata Knight Riders backed Nitish Rana with the captaincy in the absence of Shreyas Iyer.
Virender Sehwag commented on this:
“Graeme Smith captained South Africa at the age of 23 and continued till he retired. Nitish Rana also didn’t have much captaincy experience before. So you can always try players like Rahul Tripathi, Mayank Agarwal, etc. Even Bhuvneshwar Kumar could be the captain as he is very polite and could have that clarity in communication with foreign players and Indians.”
The captaincy of Aiden Markram has undoubtedly come under scrutiny, and it would be intriguing to watch whether the Sunrisers pick a new captain next season.