Sunrisers Hyderabad were forced to make plenty of changes to their middle-order due to skipper Kane Williamson’s return to fitness and the poor form of Yusuf Pathan and Manish Pandey, which left the home side’s middle-order rather inexperienced against the Delhi Capitals on Sunday.
Williamson replaced Afghanistan all-rounder Mohammad Nabi while young Ricky Bhui and Abhishek Sharma came in for Pathan and Pandey. Opener David Warner felt that an inexperienced middle-order was one of the reasons for Sunrisers’ 39-run loss to the Capitals.
“I don’t like hindsight. There was a decision that they (the team management) made. I’m no longer part of that process, I don’t know what their thinking was but when you lose that experience in the middle, it can be quite challenging and quite difficult for the new guys that come in,” Warner, who scored 51 off 47 balls, said after the loss on Sunday.
Baroda all-rounder Pathan (32 runs with a strike rate of 86.48) and Karnataka batsman Pandey (54 runs at strike rate 93.10) have been struggling for form so far this season. Warner put on 72 runs for the first wicket but it took 9.5 overs for the same. From 101/2, Sunrisers lost the last eight wickets for 15 runs.
“There are no excuses. We got off to a good start, we didn’t capitalise on those middle periods, there were a lot of ones, not many twos, they (Capitals) shut down the boundaries well and they bowled very well,” Warner, who now has 400 runs in seven games at an average of 80, said. “We just missed a couple of opportunities to hit boundaries through that middle period.” he added.
