VVS Laxman Explains The Reason Behind Roping In Domestic Recruits For Sunrisers Hyderabad

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) might not be the most successful franchise; however, it has remained highly competitive. Their mentor VVS Laxman will join the likes of head coach Trevor Bayliss and assistant Brad Haddin in shepherding the side to their second IPL title. VVS Laxman also underlined the reason behind signing many domestic recruits in the batting department for the upcoming leg.

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While Sunrisers Hyderabad has always boasted of a strong top-order, headlined by the likes of David Warner, Jonny Bairstow, and Kane Williamson, their middle-order has come under scrutiny. Manish Pandey and Vijay Shankar have remained inconsistent in their run-scoring while Wriddhiman Saha and Shreevats Goswami have not been regular fixtures.

Ahead of the forthcoming edition, the Orange Army went for the likes of Priyam Garg (₹1.9 Crore), Virat Singh (₹1.9 Crore), Abdul Samad (₹20 lakh) and Bavanaka Sandeep, and Sanjay Yadav (₹20 lakh) in the auction. Their imports include Australia and West Indies all-rounders Mitchell Marsh and Fabian Allen respectively.

VVS Laxman highlighted that they deliberately went for plenty of youngsters, who are prolific performers in the domestic circuit. The 45-year old said that when taken a glance at their squad, they boasted of plenty of experienced athletes from overseas and India. However, they needed Indian players in the middle-order to bolster their batting and thereby decided to go for top performers in the last two seasons.

“In the auction, it was a very intentional effort to have the youngsters. While they are youngsters, they are all the most prolific performers in domestic cricket. When you see the composition of our team, we had a lot of experienced players from both overseas and India.

“But when we look at the domestic players, we required to strengthen our batting, especially our middle-order batting. So we went with the performer in the last couple of seasons,” VVS Laxman stated through a video released by the franchise.

VVS Laxman not concerned about empty stands in the IPL:

With the IPL set to commence from the 19th of September in the UAE, for the first time, the fans would not grace with their presence. Nevertheless, VVS Laxman asserted that the fans worldwide would enjoy the sport and their absence will not affect the quality of cricket.

“I can assure all the fans of the game that they will really enjoy the competition even though there won’t be any crowd or any spectators on the ground. Don’t ever think that the energy or the quality of cricket will come down,” VVS Laxman added.

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