Sunrisers Hyderabad have appointed Pat Cummins as their captain for the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL 2024) season. He will replace Aiden Markram at the helm under whom the franchise finished at 10th position last season. Interestingly, Markram was named the captain last year after he had led Sunrisers’ SA20 franchise to title in the inaugural edition.
Under his leadership, Sunrisers defended the title in the second edition as well last month. So, many felt Markram would get another shot at the IPL trophy this season. But SRH have decided to move on handing over the reins to Cummins who won the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup as Australia’s captain at the international level in 2023.
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However, Cummins hasn’t led not only any IPL team but also Australia so far and this will be his captaincy debut in the shortest format of the game. He was the second most expensive ever player in the history of IPL at the auction with SRH splurging a massive amount of INR 20.5 crore to secure his services.
This will be, in a way, a comeback for him in the IPL having skipped the cash-rich league last year to concentrate on WTC Final and the World Cup, the two tournaments which Australia won under him. He last played for Kolkata Knight Riders from IPL 2020 to 2022 editions and coincidentally, Cummins will be making his T20 captaincy debut against the same team on March 23 when SRH are scheduled to open their campaign in IPL 2024.
As far as SRH are concerned, Pat Cummins is their third captain in as many season with Kane Williamson and Aiden Markram leading in last two seasons. In 2022 edition, they had finished at the 8th place and last year, things even worsened as they ended at 10th position with only four wins in 14 matches.
As for Cummins, he has played 42 matches in his IPL career picking up 45 wickets at an average of 30.16 and a strike-rate of 21.18. Moreover, he has scored 379 runs in 31 innings at a brilliant strike-rate of 152.21 and has three half-centuries to his name as well.
Cummins will work with the new support staff that has also been appointed ahead of the upcoming season. Former New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori is in charge of the side as head coach taking over from Brian Lara who was at the helm of the affairs at SRH last year. Tom Moody was the head coach of the team in IPL 2022.
SRH also announced former Kiwi player James Franklin as the bowling coach only for this season with Dale Steyn opting out of IPL 2024 due to personal reasons. With so many changes in personnel at crucial positions, SRH will be hoping to turn their IPL fortunes around and repeat the heroics of 2016 edition having lifted the trophy with David Warner as captain.
