Auction review: SRH

 Investment in youth - OK. Where is the old-guard??

A look at teams from the Hyderabad franchises of the past always gives you these key commonalities - a strong bowling line-up, a top-heavy batting line-up and a brittle middle order. But yet another common factor across the various teams that have been picked has always been the lack of a proper Indian middle order talent.

Players like Hanuma Vihari, Sunny Sohal, Yusuf Pathan (past his prime), Vijay Shankar, Manish Pandey, Priyam Garg, Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Akshath Reddy have all played vital roles in matches on their days. But none of them have been able to provide the consistency that is needed for a successful team.

The only times the Hyderabad franchises have been successful - they've been driven by great captaincy - in Adam Gilchrist, David Warner and Kane Williamson. And the fact that these captains batted at the top only cements the "top-heavy batting line-up" argument. So everyone expected SRH to go for a balanced pick at the auction. Did they live-up to that expectation? Let's see

As a reminder, they had retained KW and a couple of rookies (Abdul Samad and Umran Malik (that was a surprise actually)). So effectively they just had a captain to build a team around. And when they seemed like going the full distance for Ishan Kishan, everyone thought they meant business. But alas! They gave up the Kishan chase after touching the 15cr mark and then (surprisingly) did not move a muscle when David Warner, Johnny Bairstow and Jason Holder came under the hammer!

The foreigner as a wicket keeper legacy seemed set to continue with Nicholas Pooran's purchase - despite his poor form in the past seasons. QDK could have been a better choice. And then came Washington Sundar - a promising purchase but not a signal of intent though. What followed after that was a complicated pursue of a variety of players. Despite having Brian Lara, Muthiah Muralitharan, Tom Moody and Simon Katich on the table, the picks never seemed to suggest the quartet had brainstormed the list. As if to make the case even more curious, they brought back Bhuvaneswar Kumar, T Natrajan and (!!!) Abhishek Sharma and made some big money annexures like Romario Shepherd, Rahul Tripathi and Marco Jansen.

At the end as I went through the 23 man team, that was supposed to be built around Kane the captain, I could see a bunch of rookies, a couple of (mandatory) West Indies players and a decent bowling line-up (not that they had managed to find a replacement for Rashid Khan - Shreyas Gopal really???).  It's all youth and dash written all over the team but the real problem would come on the field. They have a captain. But where is the vice-captain?? Who'll Kane go to if he wanted to come up with a Plan B? Bhuvi and Pooran can be handy. But a real experienced hand is what he will miss. Now go back two paragraphs and read that line again - did not move a muscle when David Warner, Johnny Bairstow and Jason Holder came under the hammer!

Probable XI: Tripathi, Pooran/Philips (wk), Kane (c), Markram, Abhishek, Samad/Gopal, Sundar, Jansen/Abbott, Bhuvi, Natrajan, Umran/Tyagi