IPL 2020: David Warner reveals why Kane Williamson didn’t play SRH’s opening match against RCB

In their opening match of the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL) against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) went with David Warner, Jonny Bairstow, Rashid Khan and Mitchell Marsh as their overseas players. However, Kane Williamson’s name was missing and it raised a few eyebrows. The New Zealand captain was SRH’s leading run-scorer in 2018 and also took them to the final.

About him not playing the opener, Warner, the Sunrisers’ skipper shared an update, saying that the Black Caps’ batsman sustained a quadriceps injury during the training session before the game. The southpaw also clarified the reasons behind going for all-rounder Mitchell Marsh for the match.

“Kane Williamson is not fit, he hurt his quad (quadriceps) while training the other day and (with) Mohammad Nabi. We felt playing two spinners here. Given the thought process, we wanted to chase which probably was not an option if we got stuck the other way, so we went with bowling all-rounder hitting the wicket as hard as we could,” Warner said in the presentation ceremony.

David Warner lauds Marsh

To add to SRH’s woes, even Marsh got injured and had a tough time on the field. In the very first over he bowled, he had discomfort and had to go off after bowling four balls. Vijay Shankar completed the remaining two balls in the fifth over.

Warner was disappointed, seeing his SRH and Australian teammate go down. “Obviously, disappointing for Mitchell (Marsh) to go down as he did,” he added. The SRH captain also lauded Marsh for showing loads of courage and coming out to bat.

Despite being injured, he came out to bat at number ten at a stage when his team needed someone to up the scoring rate. He went for a big shot off Shivam Dube, but holed out to RCB captain Virat Kohli. His dismissal invariably brought the curtains down on SRH’s chances of a victory.

Even when he played the shot, he looked in extreme pain. The Sunrisers’ second game is against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Saturday, September 26 at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. Whether or not Marsh and Williamson get fit for the match remains to be seen.