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Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) had a terrible campaign in the IPL 2023 as they suffered a eight-wicket defeat at the hands of Mumbai Indians on Sunday in their last league match to finish bottom of the points table. In a total of 14 matches, Aiden Markram could only win four matches.
On Sunday SRH's poor bowling attack got exposed once again as they failed to defend a dominating total of 200 and lost the match with 12 balls to spare. Cameron Green didn't spare any SRH bowler and banged left, right and centre whoever came his way. Green also recorded his maiden IPL century (100 off 47) which was studded with eight fours and as many sixes. Despite win MI got the playoffs entry only when RCB lost their do-or-die match against Gujarat Titans.
Under-utilisation of Umran Malik
In their last league clash, SRH made a few changes in their playing XI against MI which saw the inclusion of their tearaway pacer Umran Malik. SRH's team management was already under fire for under-utilising Malik in the IPL 2023. Before the match against MI, Malik has played just seven games for SRH in the sixteenth season of the ongoing IPL. In SRH's last match against RCB, skipper Markram drew flak for playing Malik less as he had revealed that he didn't know the reason behind the speedster's absence in the playing XI. However, Malik's inclusion in the final XI in SRH's last match against MI didn't make any difference as he conceded 41 runs in a spell of three overs.
Sehwag comes down heavily on Malik
Former India's explosive batter Virender Sehwag criticised Malik by saying that despite working with Dale Steyn for so many years, he hasn't learned much so far as he keeps repeating the same mistake over and over again.
“You can only win by dismissing those batters. (Markram had kept) Fine leg, square leg, and deep midwicket, and asked the bowler to bowl a back-of-the-length delivery. But the batters didn't make a mistake. SRH took the chance, but the batters smashed them all around the park,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
"The bowlers weren't pretty good. The captain could've asked them to keep one of long-on and long-off. The thing was, you failed to stop the flow of runs altogether. If it were a South African pacer, I could've understood that he wouldn't want to bowl too full. But Umran Malik... the problem is that he keeps shuffling his length. He doesn't have the experience yet. He might have worked a lot with Dale Steyn, but he hasn't really got the idea of his length. Despite working with Steyn for so long and learning under him, he's doing the same mistakes that he did last year,” Sehwag said.
Malik, who was exceptional with the ball in the previous edition of the IPL where he snared 22 wickets including a brilliant fifer but this time around the star pacer didn't get enough opportunities to prove his mettle. In IPL 2023, Malik finished with just five wickets in a total of eight matches at a dismal economy rate of 10.85.
