IPL 2018: Three players SRH could have bought instead of Manish Pandey

The Sunrisers Hyderabad have had an amazing IPL 2018. Although they lost in the finals to CSK, the teams’ journey this year was just spectacular. Remember, they were playing in the absence of their skipper and most important batsman in David Warner. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who is another pillar of their side also played with an injury. This injury definitely affected his performance in the season.

At the same time, Kane Williamson has to be commended for leading the side beautifully. He has made the best possible use of resources that he had. However, the shortcoming of the side could be clearly felt. The team struggled with its middle order. One of the biggest disappointments out there was Manish Pandey.

Pandey, who was a vital cog in KKR lineup had a terrific IPL 2017. Hence, he was paid a hefty amount of INR 11 crores by SRH to acquire his services. However, his stint with SRH this year was very disappointing. He couldn’t get going in the middle overs making the SRH middle-order highly unstable.

Manish has scored 284 runs in 15 games this year at an average of 26 while his average last year was 50. His strike rate also took a dip and struggled to time the ball properly throughout this season. As a result, he had to be dropped from the side in the playoffs.

Here are the three players SRH could have bought instead of Manish Pandey:

1. KL Rahul

The Sunrisers Hyderabad management will surely regret not buying KL Rahul at the IPL auction. Rahul, who started his IPL career with the Sunrisers Hyderabad later shifted to RCB as a part of the player transfer program. In the mega-auction this year, the Rajasthan Royals and the Mumbai Indians bid for him up to INR 6 crores. Later, it was SRH and KXIP who were involved in a fierce bidding battle for him.

SRH bid up to INR 10.5 crores but gave up at INR 11 crores. They bought Saha for INR 5 crores later who also didn’t yield positive results for them. SRH should have invested more on KL as he also doubles up as the wicket-keeper. KL had a terrific IPL 2018 and has scored 659 runs in 14 games at an average of 55.