Sunrisers Hyderabad in Indian Premier League
8th April (CRICKETNMORE) - The journey of the Deccan Chargers (Sunrisers Hyderabad) in the cash-rich IPL has been unevenly extraordinary. Apart from their awesome
8th April (CRICKETNMORE) - The journey of the Deccan Chargers (Sunrisers Hyderabad) in the cash-rich IPL has been unevenly extraordinary. Apart from their awesome win in the 2009 edition of the IPL, the performance of the team has been disturbingly agonizing.
The Hyderabad franchise was bought by Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd for $107 million in the 2008 bid. They made VVS Laxman their icon player and skipper and despite having players like Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi, Scott Styris, Rohit Sharma and Herschelle Gibbs, who were known for their slam-bang cricket, they had a disastrous start and finished last in the league.
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After the debacle of 2008, the owners made a lot of big changes - coach, captain and even the jersey colour. With some fresh faces from the domestic circuit, the team looked quite different. They got in new faces - Ryan Harris, Fidel Edwards, Dwayne Smith and made Adam Gilchrist the captain. After the complete makeover, they started the league with a bang. The performance in 2009 is regarded as the most impressive comeback in IPL history. In the final against Royal Challengers Bangalore, they successfully defended the total of 143 and won the match by 6 runs.
In the 2010 season they got West indian pace bowler Kemar Roach and Australian all-rounder Mitchell Marsh on board. There were a lot of expectations from the team, but their early loss of fve matches in a row put them in a spot of bother. But after winning their last 5 matches, they managed to scrape through to the play-offs, though they lost in the semi-finals.
The 2011 season saw the arrival of Dale Steyn, Kumar Sangakkara, Cameroon White, Amit Mishra, Shikhar Dhawan and Ishant Sharma in the Chargers line-up. However, despite possessing a superior bowling arsenal, they were let down many a times in by their batsmen with none showing any consistency. Though they managed to win their last 3 games in a row, they finished 7th in the league table.
In 2012, the Chargers let go off some important players like Pragyan ojha and Kevin Pietersen but could not buy any suitable replacements for them. Thus, they relied heavily on Dale Steyn and Cameroon White to bail them out of difficult situations. Moreover, Ishant Sharma's injury was an added disadvantage and finished 8th in the league table out of nine teams.
Just before 2013 IPL eve, the Deccan Chargers was embroiled in a controversy and lost its IPL status since its owners failed to produce, within the deadline, the Rs 100-crore ($19 million) bank guarantee the Bombay High Court had set as the condition for the team's survival in the league. Thus, the BCCI issued fresh bids and the team was bought by Kalanithi Maran of the Sun TV channel Network, naming it Sunrisers Hyderabad. They retained most of the players of the Deccan Chargers and bought new faces like Darren Sammy, Thisara Perera, Quinton de Kock. The team reached the play-offs but were eliminated in the Eliminator.
In the 2014 season, they were captained by Shikhar Dhawan. But except a few good performances by David Warner and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar the team failed to find the required consistency and won only six of their 14 games. They were ranked 6th in the league table.
Abhishek (CRICKETNMORE)
