'We want him to be that great all-rounder, but it’s going to take time' - Brian Lara on Washington Sundar's role in SRH

Sunrisers Hyderabad suffered their second consecutive loss in the Indian Premier League 2023 as they were defeated by Chennai Super Kings by 7 wickets on Friday, April 21 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. After being put in to bat first, SRH were blown away by Ravindra Jadeja’s spell as they could only manage to reach 134/7 in their allotted 20 overs.

In reply, CSK chased down the target in 18.4 overs as Devon Conway scored his third consecutive fifty of the season scoring 77* off 57 balls. SRH all-rounder Washington Sundar didn’t have the best of the nights as he scored nine off 6 balls and gave away 16 runs in 2.4 overs.  

Following their loss, head coach Brian Lara stated that Sundar offers value to the franchise with both bat and ball. However, they’re patient with the 23-year-old and don’t want to rush him by and promoting him up the order.

“Washington’s value to the team is both to bowl and bat, but we have got players who can play at the top positions. With Washington, yes, we want him to be that great all-rounder with both bat and ball, but I think it’s going to take time. Pressing the button and saying that this kid has potential and let’s get him up [the batting order], that’s pretty much pressing the panic button,” said Lara at the post-match press conference.

In IPL 2023 so far, Sundar has scored 36 runs from four innings at an average of nine and a strike rate of 80. He’s further remained wicketless after bowling 13.4 overs and has given away 118 runs at an economy of 8.63. 

The left-right combination is not a bad one: Brian Lara

SRH's batting unit once again let the team down scoring only 134 in the first innings. They tried a new opening combination of Harry Brook and Abhishek Sharma instead of Mayank Agarwal and the duo added 35 runs in 4.2 overs. Commenting on the performance of the new opening pair, Lara said that the left-right combination showed some promise.

“The experiment of trying to get Harry Brook up the order produced a 100. If you would ask what team we would want to have at the beginning of the tournament, if we had a fit Abhishek then it’d be Abhishek and Mayank Agarwal [as openers]. But Harry Brook has given the innings some impetus, the couple of times that he has been able to get off. You can see he has intention. The left-right combination is not a bad one. It didn’t entirely work today [Friday], but there was some promise,” Lara added.

Meanwhile, after losing consecutive games against Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings, SRH have slipped to the ninth spot on the points table with two wins from six matches. They will look to return back to winning ways against Delhi Capitals on Monday, April 24 at their home ground, the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.