@B0$
Very few teams can look back and claim proudly to have broken their free fall of mediocrity with such conviction like Sunrisers did in 2024. SRH spent two-thirds of the previous cycle seeming rudderless as they searched for their next messiah after a messy break-up with David Warner. In the last instalment of the cycle, when underperforming teams could be forgiven for already thinking about a revamp a year later, SRH landed on their feet with Pat Cummins. He walked in with fellow Aussie Travis Head and a head coach (Daniel Vettori) who he already had a working relationship with to flip SRH's middling fortunes around.
Fresh minds brought fresh ideas as SRH chose to colour outside the lines of batting conventions, even in an ever-evolving format. Jaws still dropped and heads were still shaken in disbelief at how far they went with maximising batting PowerPlays and swinging for the fences enroute to their first final since 2018. But finding a playing style that resonated top-down with the squad just before a mega auction came with the risk of being short-lived. The consensus on the retention rules – six players with no cap on overseas picks, however, allowed SRH to hold on to their high-performing assets.
SRH spent a big chunk of their purse on replacing experience with experience as Mohammed Shami and Harshal Patel came in to fill the shoes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan. But more crucially, SRH go into the 2025 season with arguably the most explosive top-five of the tournament. Armed with the new retention rules, SRH have four of those five carrying on from the previous edition, with Ishan Kishan joining the ranks and potentially elevating it further. More of the same, but better could well be SRH's rallying call as they look to step into the new cycle with old habits.
@B1$
Pat Cummins, Heinrich Klaasen, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Mohammed Shami, Harshal Patel, Abhinav Manohar, Rahul Chahar, Adam Zampa, Simarjeet Singh, Eshan Malinga, Jaydev Unadkat, Wiaan Mulder, Kamindu Mendis, Zeeshan Ansari, Atharva Taide, Sachin Baby, Aniket Verma
@B2$
Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Ishan Kishan, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen, Abhinav Manohar, Sachin Baby/Aniket Verma, Pat Cummins, Harshal Patel, Adam Zampa, Mohammed Shami, Rahul Chahar/Simarjeet Singh
@B3$
SRH have already replaced their injured overseas seam-bowling all-rounder Brydon Carse with a South African of similar vocation – Wiaan Mulder. Cummins, who missed the recent Champions Trophy with an ankle injury, is fit to lead the team from their first fixture. SRH's find of 2024 and their INR 6 crore retention, Nitish Reddy, has also passed fit after suffering a side strain during the T20I series against England in January.
@B4$
@B5$: Since the end of 2023, Kishan has meandered away a little, losing his India spot in all three formats and the subsequent central contract for the 2023-24 season that was announced last February. The fall down the pecking order has been swift and hard as he was also overlooked for the T20 World Cup winning squad of 2024. The path back up is steep but he's already on it having returned to action for Jharkhand in the domestic circuit. Following that up with a good IPL season could catapult him back into the selectors' radar ahead of next year's home T20 World Cup, with head coach Gautam Gambhir insistent on maintaining left-right balance in the top-order.
Kishan and SRH is not a match made in auction dynamics desperation, but one that the franchise has long coveted. They pushed MI till the very end in 2022 and fell short, but snapped him up last year and could now roll out the carpet for him to dazzle from the top.
@B6$
@B7$: The Karnataka batter, who has shown himself to be an effective biffer, could be in for a consistent run of games from the middle-order for the big-hitting side. He was prised away by GT in 2022 but did not get enough gametime to fully display his wares. He triggered a bidding tussle in the IPL auction in November after scoring 550 runs in 11 innings in the Maharaja T20 League 2024 – the second-best tally behind Karun Nair's 560 – at a whopping strike rate of 195.35. He clobbered 57 sixes too, 27 more than the next best (Nair with 30). A little over a month after being picked by SRH for INR 3.20 Crore, Manohar smashed a 42-ball 79 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy final.
On ability and form, he's an ideal fit for the finisher's role, to pile on to the wreckage caused by the batters ahead of him. After playing just 8, 9 and 2 games in the last three seasons, Manohar could get a new lease of life at a team whose expansive batting philosophies align with his.
@B8$
Sunrisers have an opportunity to fly off the blocks as five of their first eight games are at home in Hyderabad where the flat tracks perfectly accommodated their batting rhythms (6 wins in 7 at home), putting them on the path to playoffs in 2024. They start off with two home games and a third in Visakhapatnam – a flight time of just over an hour away from Hyderabad. One of the other two away games in the first month is in Mumbai, where the true surface should be an ally but also where one of their five defeats came last season.
For the first five fixtures, SRH have a maximum of three days of turnaround time between matches before a spaced out block of four games in April. Though there are a couple of matches with fewer days in between even with travel involved, SRH also have longer breaks (4-5 days) between two home games at two different times in the season, making room for rest and recharge. SRH go away for their last two league games – first to Bengaluru, where they smashed 287/3 in a 25-run victory last season and then to Lucknow, where they did not play in 2024. SRH are also one of six franchises that will play two afternoon games (three for the others) – both coming in the first eight days of their campaign.
@B9$
Batters brutalised the bowlers at SRH's home venue last season – a scoring rate of 9.99, bettered only by Delhi's 10.76. The continuation of the impact player leeway and SRH's batting ethos suggests more of the same will be attempted this year.