Former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra was baffled to see Sunrisers Hyderabad release a lot of players from last year’s squad, including some big buys like Kane Williamson, Shepherd and Nicholas Pooran.
Williamson, Pooran, and Romario Shepherd together cost SRH about INR 32 crore.
Yet, after just one year, Hyderabad decided to release all three and press the reset button.
Speaking in a video on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra felt that SRH owners need to find out who exactly is responsible for such unstable decision-making. He said:
“When you spend around 7 crores on Romario Shepherd and around 12 crores on Pooran, questions need to be asked to the one making these decisions in the auction whether they’re buying only to release next year.”
Aakash Chopra opined that the Sunrisers should not worry too much about their fast bowling department.
When it comes to Indian pacers, they have great depth with the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik and Kartik Tyagi in the mix. On this, Chopra stated:
“The sun has actually set for the Sunrisers Hyderabad as they have released a whole host of players and have INR 42.25 crore in their kitty. However, their retained core doesn’t look strong enough. One thing is for sure that they won’t need fast bowlers as they already have an army of pacers.”
Hyderabad have the biggest money going into the IPL 2023 auction. However, they have made some dubious decisions in the past and it will be interesting to see how they fare this time.