Sunrisers Hyderabad ended their IPL 2023 campaign with an eight-wicket defeat against Mumbai Indians on Sunday. The 2016 champions had a forgetful outing in this season, with only four victories in 14 matches. Despite having many big names like Aiden Markram, Mayank Agarwal, Glenn Phillips, SRH failed to leave a mark and finished at the bottom of the points table. Apart from them, one player who turned out to be a major disappointment this year was pacer Umran Malik. The Jammu and Kashmir speedster emerged as a superstar in 2022 but gave a completely opposite performance this year.
During the clash against MI, Umran leaked 41 runs in his three-over quota and went wicketless. Seeing his below-par performance, former India batter Virender Sehwag did not mince his words and stated that the young pacer hasn’t learned anything from SRH’s fast bowling coach Dale Steyn.
“Umran Malik’s problem is that he keeps shuffling his length. He doesn’t have the experience yet. He might have worked a lot with Dale Steyn, but he hasn’t really got the idea of his length. Despite working with Steyn for so long and learning under him, he’s doing the same mistakes that he did last year,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
Notably, Umran played 14 matches in IPL 2022 and scalped 22 wickets. However, he was given only eight matches in 2023, where he could take only five wickets.
Earlier, on being asked about Umran’s absence from the team, former India pacer Zaheer Khan had stated that Umran was not managed well by his franchise.
“Umran Malik has not been handled well I felt by the franchise, (in) the way he should have been handled by the franchise, (in) the way his services should have been utilised by SRH. That’s something which was evident,” Zaheer Khan, IPL expert with official digital broadcasters Jio Cinema, had told NDTV.
The former star left-arm pacer added that Umran did not get proper guidance at SRH.
“When you are talking about a young seamer, you are also looking at creating that environment and support. And, that guidance is required. Unfortunately that was not seen by SRH. That’s why, he’s had a season like this,” Zaheer had said.
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