Given that Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have taken a bold step of sacking David Warner from the captaincy and also benching him for a couple of matches in the ongoing IPL 2021 tournament, former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has suggested a possible replacement for the Australian in the SRH team.
David Warner and Kane Williamson (Image Credit: Twitter)
David Warner struggled as both captain and as captain as the Sunrisers lost 5 matches out of 6 played thus far in the Indian Premier League (IPL 14) and are placed at the bottom of the points table. This led to the SRH think-tank consisting of coach Trevor Bayliss, director of cricket Tom Moody, mentors VVS Laxman and Muttiah Muralitharan, deciding to relieve Warner of his captaincy and make Kane Williamson the captain for the remainder of the IPL 2021 season.
The collective then decided to make Kane Williamson the captain for the remainder of the tournament also mentioned that David Warner will miss a couple of games to get some breather and get his mojo back.
If He Doesn’t Feature In The Playing Eleven In The Next Game Or The Game After That, You’ll Know Exactly Why He Has Been Left Out: Sanjay Manjrekar
Cricketer-turned-Commentator Sanjay Manjrekar feels that the reason behind David Warner being left out of the SRH playing XI might be that SRH wants to rectify their bowling woes especially after Bhuvneshwar Kumar was laid low with an injury for the second IPL season in a row.
David Warner (Image Credit: Twitter)
“The only reason I see for him to be removed from the captaincy is they want someone like Jason Holder to come in or have another game-changing spinner like Rashid Khan in the shape of Mujeeb. But that again will be an interesting call. But if he doesn’t feature in the playing eleven in the next game or the game after that, you’ll know exactly why he has been left out,” said Manjrekar.
Jason Holder (Image Credit: Twitter)
Jason Holder will be a better option given that he boosted the SRH team in IPL 2020 when he came in as a replacement for Mitchell Marsh and gleaned 66 runs and 14 wickets from just 7 games to initiate a massive turnaround that culminated in SRH’s 3rd place finish.
David Warner Didn’t Deserve To Be Dropped: Sanjay Manjrekar
However, Manjrekar admitted that dropping David Warner from the playing XI is not the solution to the problem and the Australian opener doesn’t deserve to be given this treatment. He also argued that SRH lost 4 of their 6 matches chasing par totals where Warner couldn’t have much of an impact with his leadership.
“I’ve been a huge admirer of David Warner. He’s one batsman that I look at as a symbol of the consistency of an overseas player. I mean, IPL after IPL this guy has delivered for Sunrisers Hyderabad. And [this year as well] it hasn’t been the case where he hasn’t got a run or looked out of form where you need to drop him… Warner doesn’t deserve to be dropped.
Captaincy as well, there were 3 run chases that they should have won easily, where does captaincy feature in that? There was also a Super Over. Had they batted better, they would have 4 wins there,” claimed Manjrekar.
Sunrisers Hyderabad will next face Rajasthan Royals in Delhi in the clash of bottom-of-table teams.
Also Read: IPL 2021: David Warner Stripped Of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Captaincy Due To His Comments On Manish Pandey, Feels Simon Doull
