Pat Cummins was named captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad for the upcoming Indian Premier League, on Monday, becoming the fourth player to be handed the responsibility in the last three years. The 30-year-old pacer was bought by SRH for a whopping Rs 20.50 crore at the IPL auctions, making him the second-costliest player in the event’s history. He replaced South African Aiden Markram, who led SRH in the 2023 season.
Former India player-turned-commentator and expert Aakash Chopra was not happy with the appointment, arguing that Cummins’s recent IPL numbers are not that good.
“You have made Pat Cummins the captain but have you seen his recent IPL numbers? Check attentively, he concedes a lot of runs and doesn’t score that many runs with the bat. Only four overseas players play. He neither bowls in the powerplay nor at the death,” Aakash Chopra said in his YouTube video.
“If he is not going to do all those jobs, you are spending 25 per cent of your overseas resources on a player whose place in the XI was not 100 per cent guaranteed in the IPL. That is why Pat Cummins is not the captain of the team where 11 Australians play, although he has won the World Cup, but not T20,” Chopra added.
In 42 IPL matches, Cummins has taken 45 wickets with 4/34 being his best bowling figures in a match. With the bat, he has scored 379 runs at an average of 18.95 with 66 not out being the highest.
Cummins earlier played for Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils, now Delhi Capitals, but this will be his first stint as captain in the league. He has not led a team in top-flight T20 cricket before.
But he has achieved huge success as Australia’s captain, leading the team to victory in the World Test Championship and the 2023 ODI World Cup, with both wins in the finals coming against India.
He made his IPL debut in 2014 for KKR but played just one match that season. He had a stint with Delhi Daredevils in 2017 and opted out of the IPL for a few years. Cummins returned to KKR as the costliest player of the IPL 2020 auction with a whopping price tag of Rs 15.50 crore.
In the 2023 season, SRH finished bottom of the heap under Markram’s captaincy with only four wins in 14 league games. Markram’s feat of leading Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the inaugural SA20 title in 2023 and then defending the crown last month did not help him retain the SRH captaincy, though he remains in the squad.
“There is a player named Aiden Markram who benefited the SunRisers franchise a lot. He made the SunRisers Eastern Cape the champions for two successive years in the SA20 league. However, he has been removed from the captaincy here. He captained one year in total where I felt there was a lot of confusion,” Chopra said.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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