BENGALURU: Sunrisers Hyderabad will be without their regular skipper and lead pacer Pat Cummins for at least the first two weeks of the IPL, with the Australian currently working his way back to full bowling fitness.
Head coach Daniel Vettori moved to allay concerns around Cummins’ condition, stressing that the pacer’s overall fitness is not in question.
“His fitness has been exceptional. He’s been out of the game for an extended period, so he’s had time to put in a real block of work around strength and conditioning,” Vettori said at the pre-match press conference on Friday.
The challenge, according to the former New Zealand captain, lies in rebuilding Cummins’ bowling workload.
“The only issue has been his bowling loads. Once he got the all-clear from Cricket Australia, it’s been a bit of a painstaking process to build him up to where he feels confident and strong about bowling. Over the next couple of weeks, he’ll keep building, and hopefully we’ll have a clearer timeline in 10 to 12 days,” he explained.
Vettori was all praise for stand-in skipper Ishan Kishan, who, apart from enjoying a purple patch at the T20 World Cup, also led Jharkhand to their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 title.
“He was added to the group last year, and the leadership that he exuded throughout the season, particularly in the back half when he took over the wicket keeping, really brought energy to the group and set up our back half. When Cummins was unfortunately out of the initial stage of the tournament, we obviously had some decisions to make. His experience with his state team, in particular, had been so impressive, and he was in really good form. So between Abhishek (Sharma) and himself, we feel like we’ve got a really good leadership group to lead us this year.”
Vettori also added that three young Indians, led by Karnataka southpaw R Smaran, are in contention for a place in the XI. The other two players are Aniket Verma and Salil Arora.
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