Bangladesh’s Bulbul to help Sunrisers Hyderabad batsmen in IPL 2020

The 13^th season of Indian Premier League will begin from March 29 and will see eight franchises take on each other with defending champions Mumbai Indians going against last year’s finalists Chennai Super Kings in the opening match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The teams have done amazingly well in the IPL 2020 auction buying new arsenal for this edition.

Another franchise vying for the title this season will be 2016 IPL winners Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). The franchise had to forcibly look for an all-rounder to replace their Bangladeshi star Shakib Al Hasan, who was banned for a year by BCB for not reporting a corrupt approach. With Mushfiqur Rahim not finding a buyer in an auction, there will be no Bangladeshi representation in the Indian T20 league this season.

However, the cricket-crazy Bengali nation should not lose hope as there is one Bangladeshi national who will be involved in the Indian Premier League season 13, and that is Bulbul, who will be working as support staff for the Sunrisers Hyderabad franchise. The youngster works with the Bangladeshi team as a sidearm thrower and helps batsmen in nets. He will be doing the same work with SRH batsmen as well.

Tamim Iqbal helped Bulbul get the SRH job

Bulbul spoke to BDCrictime.com and revealed that he got the job thanks to Bangladeshi national team’s computer analyst Shrinivas Chandrasekaran and newly named ODI captain Tamim Iqbal. Chandrasekaran had sent a video of Bulbul throwing balls in nets to Bangladeshi batsmen to SRH authorities. The sample of his abilities was enough for the franchise to hire Bulbul for the whole season as they liked his work.

SRH is slated to play its first match on April 1 and Bulbul is expected to leave for India on March 23, to join the franchise’s nets. His experience of throwing to the plethora of Bangladeshi left-arm batsmen will help the likes of David Warner and co. in nets as they prepare for the upcoming season. The SRH has retained its core players including Bairstow, Manish Pandey, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rashid Khan, and Mohammad Nabi and others.

Hyderabad franchise had reached the finals of IPL 2018, where they lost to Chennai Super Kings and managed to reach the playoffs in 2019 edition as well, finishing fourth on the points table.

The complete squad of Sunrisers Hyderabad for IPL 2020: David Warner (C), Kane Williamson, Manish Pandey, Virat Singh, Priyam Garg, Abdul Samad, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Siddharth Kaul, Billy Stanlake, T Natarajan, Abhishek Sharma, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mitchell Marsh, Fabian Allen, Vijay Shankar, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Sanjay Yadav, Jonny Bairstow, Wriddhiman Saha, Shreevats Goswami, Bavanaka Sandeep, Basil Thampi