Sunrisers' Hyderabad campaign ahead of this year's IPL suffered a big blow when their captain and perhaps the most valuable player, David Warner was suspended by Cricket Australia for tampering with the ball in a test match against South Africa early this year. In that moment of crisis, the team management of Hyderabad announced the current Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson as their new captain. It was an automatic choice. Kind of experience Williamson has, he was the perfect man to replace Warner. He has all the qualities of a leader. Interestingly, if David Warner was available he probably could have struggled to find his place regularly in the starting line up of SRH. Warner's unavailability was a blessing in disguise for Williamson. He took the responsibility to lead the Sunrisers positively.
Kane Williamson is not as flamboyant as the other players of his generation. He is very much in the mould of M.S. Dhoni, calm, cool and collective. Has got a great sense of the game. Kane brought all these qualities into play for Sunrisers. A terrific player himself often doesn’t get the kind of attention that he deserves, because of his down to earth demeanor. But if we think of top five batsmen in world cricket at the moment, Williamson’s name will feature automatically. He performs consistently well in every format of the game. But haven’t performed well in the last season of the IPL. With the added responsibility of captaincy, he led from the front in this year's IPL. Right from the beginning he backed his players and stood by their side even if they had a bad day at the office. That boosted the confidence of the players, especially the younger players in the squad.
Under his captaincy players like Siddharth Kaul, Rashid Khan, Deepak Hoda, Yusuf Pathan and others performed magnificently well. Williamson was able to bring the best out of everyone. Williamson led Sunrisers to the final of Vivo IPL 2018. Even though they lost the final to mighty CSK, their style of play was praised by everyone. Sunrisers were probably the only team people watched for their bowling. Likes of Rashid Khan, Bhuvi, Siddharth Kaul has been outstanding right throughout the season. It is their batting that led them down in the tournament. Apart from captain marvelous, no other batter was able to put up a consistent performance. But certain Williamson had a great IPL, batted superbly right throughout the season.
The Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper has scored 735 runs in 17 matches at an average of 52.50 and took the orange cap.
This has been a successful season for Hyderabad, lots of positives to take out of it. In the next season, they will dearly love to go one step further and lay their hands on the elusive trophy.
