Sheffield Shield 2021-22 game between Tasmania and Queensland postponed due to Covid

Junior players needed exposure to the ground: Trevor Bayliss on Warner’s absence from SRH squad

Former SRH captain David Warner was not seen at the ground in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s clash against the Rajasthan Royals in the 40th match of the Indian Premier League at the Dubai International Stadium. He was not part of the XI after not being able to perform in the first two matches of the UAE leg, but not even being at the ground made few eyebrows raise and naturally questions were asked to the management. Answering those questions, head coach Trevor Bayliss said, "We can't make the finals, so we made a decision to get the youngsters to experience not just the matches, but time around the ground and around the set-up. He wasn't the only experienced player that we'd left back at the hotel as Kedar Jadhav and Shahbaz Nadeem also didn’t travel with the team.” Saying that this policy might continue for a few more games, Bayliss added that the management will sit down in a day or two and pick a team and pick a squad of 18 that will travel for the remaining games. “Dave's obviously watching the game at the hotel and giving his support to the boys. Just like everyone else. We're all in this together,” said the 58-year-old. With Warner himself tweeting that he wouldn’t be seen at the ground in an SRH camp anymore (the tweet was later removed), it is expected that the 34-year-old, who has been the Orange Cap winner in 2015, 2017 and 2019 playing with the orange army and has scored a whopping 4014 in 95 games at 49.56 per game and a strike rate of 142.59, would be parting ways with the side in the next year’s mega auction. “This is the last year before the mega auction, those decisions will be made further down the line. He's been a great contributor to Hyderabad for a number of years now and he's very well-respected. And with the number of runs he's scored, I'm sure he's got a lot more runs in him in the IPL,” Bayliss said when asked about Warner’s future.

Pakistan great Inzamam-ul-Haq suffers heart attack, undergoes angioplasty in Lahore

Former Pakistan captain and a batting legend, Inzamam-ul-Haq underwent angioplasty surgery on Monday evening after he suffered a heart attack in Lahore. The surgery took place in a private hospital and his condition was said stable. As of Tuesday morning, doctors have kept him in observation as a stent has been successfully placed in Inzamam's heart. It was revealed that the 51-year-old had been complaining about chest pain over the last three days. Inzamam, a former captain and chief selector of the national team was currently appearing on TV News as an expert and has also been running his own Youtube channel. Pakistan's highest run-getter in ODIs with 11,701 runs in 375 matches, and the country's third-highest run-scorer in Tests with 8,829 runs from 119 matches under his belt, the charismatic sweeper of the ball and a natural six-hitter, Inzamam bid adieu to cricket after the 2007 World Cup. Later on, he worked as head coach of the Afghanistan national team and recently was appointed as a consultant to the Pakistan Super League side Peshawar ZalMI who made it to the finals of PSL 2021 in UAE.

IPL 2021 | David Warner all but confirms end of the road with Sunrisers Hyderabad

Out of form David Warner has more or less confirmed his separation from the Sunrisers Hyderabad camp amid the ongoing edition of the Indian Premier League. In reply to a comment posted by a fan on Instagram, Warner said that he will not take the field for the orange army anymore while asking for continued support for the side from his fans. Warner has been grappling with a serious dip in form and he has been dropped from the playing XI on two occasions in this edition. He has managed only 195 runs from eight innings at an abysmal average of 24.37 and strike rate of 107.73. Warner has been an iconic player and leader for the Sunrisers in their glorious past as he was the only captain to lead them to the championship in the 2015 edition. He also has been their most successful batsman with more than 500 runs in each of the last seven editions before the ongoing one that will see his departure from the orange army camp. Incidentally, he was stripped off from captaincy and the Sunriers first decided to think past him for the first time before the first round of the game against the Rajasthan Royals and his fate has all but ended before the second round of clash between the sides.

IPL 2021 | RR vs SRH: Hits & Flops as Sunrisers rise from slumber to spoil Royals' party

The contest between the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Rajasthan Royals had a completely different meaning for both sides. For the orange army, it was one attempt to salvage some pride after being positioned at the bottom of the table forever, while for the men in pink this game could have opened the door for the path upwards on the points table. Turned out, the Sunrisers proved to be a spoiler for the Royals who faced a heavy defeat and made life difficult for themselves in the IPL 2021. Here, we’ll analyse the best and worst of the performance of the night that turned the game in the favour of the Sunrisers and snatched the game away from the Royals. Hits Kane Williamson It must be very tough for the captain of a sinking ship to be calm and simplistic about his own process and routine, but if the name of the captain is Kane Williamson, all those qualities are given, as a matter of fact. If there are some qualities that he has established on his CV as an international cricketer over a decade, his ability to pick moments he wants to conquer and his ability to lift the tempo without breaking into any sweat are the two prominent ones. All of those qualities were on full-on display against the Royals as he batted with absolute calm and authority along with precision-guided strokes to take the Sunrisers home for the first time in the sixth game. The task of cutting the Royals’ score to size was already done by Jason Roy and Williamson needed to realise his stay at the crease was more essential for Sunrisers than his aggression and inevitably he chose his moments to inflict body blow to the opposition. He walked out to bat to replace Wriddhiman Saha who fell after giving a brilliant start with Roy and hit the winning runs. There was no fuss in his batting and the bowlers were milked into the gaps for runs to make the Royals look like a deflated unit who appeared to be only physically in the game. Williamson has taken over from David Warner and it is likely that he will have to oversee and script the resurface of the brand Sunrisers after two consecutive abysmal seasons and hence his stamp on the brand of cricket team plays was visible on the Sunriser’s approach. Jason Roy Since his emergence on the international stage for England, Jason Roy’s USP has been his ability to take the attack to the opposition camp from the word go, and the Sunrisers were in desperate need of all those qualities at the top of the order with David Warner going through a tumultuous phase in his career. However, he was overshadowed by Saha at the start of the innings before Mustafizur Rahman offered free run-scoring opportunities and he did not need a second invitation to capitalise and send the run-scoring soaring. A couple of boundaries against Mustafizur liberated him and an off-colour Chris Morris was too friendly with the full toss and half volleys and what looked like another sluggish innings by Sunriers batsmen was transformed into swashbuckling in a matter of two overs. Saha left him at the stroke of the end of the powerplay but he was snot finished and reached a deserving half-century that set up the platform for a convincing win for the Sunrisers. Sanju Samson Throughout the entire length of his career, Sanju Samson has never been a crowd pleaser except on the day when all is working for him. More often than not he frustrates his fans than giving them reasons to celebrate and a lot of those were contributed to his style of batting. He never used to care about losing his wicket in the process of maximising his potential of striking the ball but the method was too risky and he was getting more failures than succes. He vehemently rejected the idea of spending time at the crease in order to bring consistency saying it would be a “selfish” thought process. But, it has started to appear that he has finally accepted the mode of preservation over attacking to ensure more runs from the bat. In the ongoing edition of the league, Samson has scored 433 runs from 10 games at a stupendous average of 54.12 runs per innings, which is as much as 20 percentage points higher than his previous best of 34.20 in the 2019 edition. For all the talks around his inconsistency, he has quietly modelled his way of batting and he showcased all of that against the Sunrisers. He took as many as six balls to get off the mark and the first nine balls produced only six runs including a four that came off an invitational short and wide ball by Bhuvneshwar Kumar. He was quite prepared to spend time at the other end while Yashasvi Jaiswal was going great guns from the other side of the pitch. However, he was not missing out on loose deliveries and hence his method can’t be deemed “defensive” or “negative”. Till the ninth over when Jaiswal got out, Samson was batting at a run a ball 25 and although he increased his tempo over the next 15 balls, his real shot of intent resembling his stylish best came in the 15th over when he danced down the wicket off Rashid Khan and deposited him over the long-off fence. Samson did not look back from that point and punished an indisciplined Siddarth Kaul for 20-run over in the 16th over. The ease at which he smashed him through the corners of the ground ratified his decision of preserving his wicket at the start. With the first run coming off the sixth ball and just 25 runs off the first 25 balls, Samson roared to a 56-ball 82 establishing the change in his batting style. It could well be argued if his aggression would have been more worthy for the Royals as they could have gone past the par score but Samson is now showing a willingness to change his batting and only time will tell how much do does it affect his personal and team’s overall performance. Flops Sandeep Sharma Sandeep Sharma has been an uncanny bowler in his IPL career and his exploits in the powerplay have been exemplary over the years. He was the underrated pillar of the Sunrisers’ success over the years but it seems he too has gone past his use-by date in terms of executing similar performances. He has taken a lot of wickets with the new ball but on the night against the Royals, he allowed Jaiswal to open his arms and the men in pink were up and running with 11 runs on the board in the first over itself. To his credit, the second boundary of the first over was a streaky shot but the right-arm offered him another couple of freebies in his next over and his first two overs accounted for a whopping 22 runs. He redeemed himself just a bit by picking the wicket of Jaiswal but not before he had given the Royals a perfect platform at the top of the order. Chris Morris Chris Morris is the most expansive player in the history of the IPL and like many costly players in the past, he too has been too expensive per wicket and runs scored compared to the load on the team’s purse. He was dropped from the last game after having a forgettable night against the Punjab Kings where he was taken to the cleaners for 47 runs in his four overs, but the Royals need his all-around ability and hence adopted hope on him as a strategy against the Sunrisers. Both the hope and Morris was not ready to please Samson and the all-rounder had another harrowing night against the Kane Williamson side. He was tasked to stop Jason Roy’s juggernaut as big players are generally assigned the task of executing grand tasks but he ended up offering freebies to the right-hander and he took the game away from the men in pink. All other four teams such as the RCB, KKR, MI and PBKS would have been very happy with the Sunrisers registering a much-awaited game as it complicate the path of qualification for the Royals. For the Sunrisers, the win meant a lot as it highlighted their willingness to accept that the glorious past will no longer work for them anymore as the trio of David Warner, Kedar Jadhav and Manish Pandey were shown the door for young players such as Priam Garg and Abdul Samad.