Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Tom Moody rued Washington Sundar’s injury after they lost against Chennai Super Kings by 13 runs at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune on Sunday.
Sundar was injured while fielding at the boundary rope and could not even bowl a single over.
Thus, Kane Williamson had to turn to Aiden Markram and Shashank Singh to complete Sundar’s overs. Markram was taken for 36 runs in his three overs whereas Singh conceded 10 runs in the solitary over he bowled.
Consequently, the Orange Army could not apply the pressure in the middle overs and Sundar’s injury hampered their bowling innings. CSK was able to post a par score of 202 runs after Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway added 182 runs for the opening alliance as SRH bowlers were taken to the cleaners.
In fact, apart from Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who returned with figures of 0-22 in his quota of four overs, all the other SRH bowlers were expensive in their respective spells as Conway and Gaikwad took them apart.
“Unfortunate for him, he got a knock on the same hand where he split his webbing and had stitches. It had healed completely, but he re-injured that area. It’s not to the point where he needs a re-stitch, but it wasn’t in a state where he could bowl. So, it’s incredibly unlucky for him and his injury impacted us in the early phase of our bowling given that he plays such a critical role for us in the first 10 overs,” Moody said in the post-match press conference.
“At the end of the day when you lose one of your important bowlers, whether it’s a spinner or not, it is a massive blow to the side. It wasn’t only that situation for us as we also had Natarajan off the field with an injury that was taking some time before he could come back on,” he stated.
Former Australian all-rounder added they should have been chasing 20-30 runs fewer than what they eventually had to chase.
“So basically, we had 7 overs that hadn’t been bowled by frontline bowlers up to the 14th to 15th over. So, it made it very difficult for Kane to manage the situation out in the middle and hence, we chased a total that was 20-30 runs more than it should have been,” Moody added.
The Orange Army will next face Delhi Capitals at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai on Thursday.
