IPL 2022: Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Kane Williamson got plenty of things wrong tactically, says Wasim Jaffer

Sunrisers Hyderabad endured a nightmare of a start to their IPL 2022 campaign. They failed to restrict Rajasthan Royals from scoring 200+ and suffered a complete collapse during the run-chase, thus losing by a huge margin of 61 runs.

Former India batsman Wasim Jaffer said that while Kane Williamson is an accomplished captain with the New Zealand cricket team and is a proven leader, he did make a few tactical errors in the opening encounter. Aiden Markram should’ve come in to bat ahead of West Indies’ Nicholas Pooran.

Pooran, who arrived to the crease at number 3, had a night to forget. He got out on a duck after facing nine deliveries and hasn’t been in the best of form in IPL lately. Markram, on the other hand, remained not out on 57 and was the biggest takeaway from the match as far as the SRH batting unit is concerned.

Besides the South African batter, Indian all-rounder Washington Sundar also looked in fine touch. He smashed 40 off just 14 deliveries while coming to bat lower down the order. However, by that point, it was already too late for SRH. Jaffer reckoned that the Sunrisers Hyderabad should look to send in Sundar to bat earlier for him to have a proper impact. The team won’t benefit much from batting him at number 8.

“I felt Kane Williamson got a lot of things wrong tactically and it is a very surprising thing to say as he is such a good captain. Aiden Markram could have batted ahead of Nicolas Pooran and Pooran could have come at number 5. Washington Sundar batting at number 8, he could also have been pushed up the order. You need to get these things right. But it is better for them to go wrong in the initial games rather than in later ones,” Jaffer said while speaking on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 time out live.

The Kane Williamson-led team suffered an extremely poor start to their run-chase. They were reduced to 14/3 inside the first six overs – the joint-lowest Powerplay score in IPL history. Wasim Jaffer believes that Hyderabad had lost the match in the powerplay itself and there was little hope for recovery going forward.

“Very disappointing for SRH. They won the toss, but this is the first time that we have seen a team batting first win a game in IPL 2022. A very forgetful game for them as everything went wrong. From bowling in the powerplay, to bowling in middle-overs, and batting too. They lost the game in the powerplay itself while batting.”