3 reasons why SRH dropping Abhishek Sharma was a blunder

The talented batter from Punjab, Abhishek Sharma returned to Sunrisers Hyderabad's line-up on Friday after having been left out of the side for a couple of games. Sharma played the first game against the Rajasthan Royals but was dropped after just one failure, much to everyone's surprise.

On his return to the side today, Sharma smashed a 17-ball 32 to help SRH get to 228-4 in the first innings. His innings is a testimony to the fact that the southpaw shouldn't have been dropped in the first place.

2⃣0⃣0⃣ up for @SunRisers 🙌🏻

Abhishek Sharma jumps on the bandwagon and races to 32* off 16 👌🏻👌🏻

Follow the match ▶️ bit.ly/TATAIPL-2023-19

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Here, we look at three reasons why SRH dropping Abhishek Sharma was a blunder:

#1 Overall T20 Record

The 22-year old Abhishek Sharma has a prolific T20 record having scored 1,476 runs in 68 games. He has an average of 27.33 coupled with a strike-rate of 134.67. He has scored eight half-centuries and a century in the shortest format.

To add to that, Abhishek also has bowling credentials. He has 26 wickets to his name, and keeps things tight as his economy rate of 6.38 suggests.

#2 Performance in IPL 2022

Sunrisers Hyderabad endured a terrible run in last year's IPL as they finished eighth on the points table having won only six games. However, Abhishek Sharma was a rare bright spot for them as he scored 426 runs in 14 games. His runs came at a strike-rate of more than 130 and as such, SRH dropping him after one game this year was difficult to understand.

#3 Only left-hander in the top order

Sunrisers Hyderabad's batting line-up is full of right-handers due to the presence of Harry Brook, Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klassen.

Hence, Abhishek Sharma's presence was important to negate the match-ups. Sharma's absence makes it quite easy for the the opposition's skipper to trouble the right-hander heavy SRH lineup.