The Cricketer's quickfire look at Sunrisers ahead of the 2022 season
Captain: Kane Williamson
Coach: Trevor Bayliss
How did they do last year: 8th
Overseas headliner?
Kane Williamson average 40.10 and has a strike rate of 131.26 for the franchise and is their premier batter.
However, he arrives in India having not played since November 2021 due to an ongoing elbow injury.
Indian superstar?
He struggled in 2021 but it’s not too long ago that Bhuvneshwar Kumar was taking wickets for the fun in the IPL.
Capable of swinging the ball both ways and a strong powerplay option, he needs just eight wickets in 2022 to join a select group of players with 150 IPL wickets.
Kane Williamson leads SRH in this year's IPL
Biggest strength?
Sunrisers have a promising pace attack, with South Africa’s Marco Jansen and promising speed sensation Umran Malik joining senior trio T Natarajan, Kumar and Sean Abbott.
Where’s the weakness?
Batting. Kane Williamson and Rahul Tripathi aside, there is no clear structure to Sunrisers’ batting line-up and they spent poorly at the mega-auction in the overseas department, picking up three players who are largely unproven in the IPL in Nicolas Pooran, Glenn Phillips, and Aiden Markram, and flashing cash at the unpredictable Romario Shepherd.
And with Williamson struggling with injury, the tailenders might be more involved than they’d like.
Squad: Kane Williamson, Abdul Samad, Umran Malik, Washington Sundar, Nicholas Pooran, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi, Abhishek Sharma, Kartik Tyagi, Shreyas Gopal, Jagadeesha Suchith, Aiden Markram, Marco Jansen, Romario Shepherd, Sean Abbott, R Samarth, Shashank Singh, Saurabh Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Glenn Phillips, Fazalhaq Farooqi
Likely starting XI: Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Kane Williamson, Nicolas Pooran, Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar, Umran Malik, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Marco Jansen, Shreyas Gopal
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