Expert analyst and renowned cricket commentator Sunil Gavaskar has affirmed that the 2016 IPL champions, Sunrisers Hyderabad will undoubtedly appoint Australia’s Pat Cummins as their captain for the upcoming edition of IPL 2024, which is most likely to start from March onwards.
The Hyderabad-based franchise bought Pat Cummins for a mouthwatering INR 20.50 Crores and made him the most expensive entity ever in IPL, moments before Mitchell Starc entered the fray and walked away with a 24.75 crore deal with the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Other than Cummins, the Sunrisers splashed over 6 crores to name 2023 Cricket World Cup final’s man-of-the-match-winning batsman Travis Head for 6.80 crores. They are now the only 2 Australians as well as reigning World champions present in the SRH squad and their other notable signing was of Sri-Lanka all-rounder Wanindu Hasaranga for 1.5 crores.
But most of the limelight was stolen particularly by Pat Cummins who was expected to generate a lot of interest from franchise owners especially after a sensational CWC 2023 campaign. The craze and hype around him would have lowered to a lot of extent had he not won the world cup but since he did, SRH chose to pay the price for him.
Right after his acquisition, question marks regarding the role of South African batter Aiden Markram who recently led the Sunrisers Eastern Cape towards successive SA20 league titles, were raised. People on social media started to gamble upon the question of who will be captaining the Sunrisers in IPL 2024.
Many claimed that SRH should respect and trust Markram with the captaincy role while others wanted Pat Cummins to take over from him otherwise his price tag would not mean anything. Now with just over a month remaining for the tournament to start, Sunil Gavaskar has asked the Kavya Maran-owned SRH team to appoint Cummins as the captain.
Gavaskar stated that Cummins was a very smart buy from not just the captaincy perspective but also in terms of him being a complete cricketer who can also score runs with the bat in delicate situations or whenever the team requires. However, Sunny G also highlighted the fact that Cummins proved to be a bit over expensive.
“I think Pat Cummins was a smart buy, maybe a little over-expensive. Smart buy because he will bring the leadership aspect to their team, which was lacking the last time around.” – Sunil Gavaskar said via Star Sports.
“That Cost Them Matches”, Sunil Gavaskar Reasons Why Pat Cummins Should Replace Aiden Markram As Captain
The 74-year-old pointed out the flaws in Aiden Markram’s SRH captaincy last year, claiming that the South African was not that great with his bowling changes and often made confusing decisions that eventually cost them crucial games and saw them finish at the bottom of the points table. And for that reason, Gavaskar feels that Pat Cummins should be trusted with the captaincy role if SRH wants to challenge for the coveted title.
“Last time around, some of the bowling changes that we saw in crucial games were just head-scratching, and that cost them matches. So now with Pat Cummins coming in, I am pretty certain that he will be the captain of the team and that will make a huge difference.” – Gavaskar concluded.