Sunrisers Hyderabad have appointed Australia's Pat Cummins as captain for the upcoming edition of Indian Premier League (IPL). His success at the helm for Australia in Tests and ODIs winning the World Test Championship (WTC) and World Cup last year has seemingly worked in his favour. Aiden Markram was the captain of the team last year but the team couldn't qualify for the playoffs finishing at the last position with only four wins from 14 matches.
Interestingly, Markram was appointed at the helm after he led the Sunrisers' franchise to title in the inaugural edition of SA20. Moreover, he defended the title as well this year in the tournament and it was expected that the South African might get yet another chance to prove his mettle as captain in the cash-rich league. However, SRH has moved on quickly from him and is expecting Cummins to lead them to the trophy for the first time since 2016.
SRH had secured Cummins' services for a massive amount of INR 20.5 crore after winning the bidding war with MI, CSK and RCB. It will be interesting to see if the Aussie ODI and Test captain will be able to replicate the success for his country in IPL as well. KKR tried it with Eoin Morgan and the man helped them qualify for the final in IPL 2021.
As for Cummins' IPL career is concerned, he has played 42 matches so far picking 45 wickets at an economy of 8.54. Cummins has fared decently with the bat as well smashing three fifties scoring 379 runs at a strike-rate in excess of 150. Cummins' first challenge will be against his former team Kolkata Knight Riders as both teams will start their IPL 2024 campaign on March 23 at the Eden Gardens.
SRH squad for IPL 2024: Pat Cummins (C), Aiden Markram, Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Abdul Samad, Heinrich Klaasen, Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik, Anmolpreet Singh, Shahbaz Ahmed, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Upendra Yadav, Sanvir Singh, Mayank Markande, Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan
