IPL 2019: Top 3 SRH batsmen to watch out for
The 12th edition of Indian Premier League is expected to get underway on March 23 and Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore are set to lock horns in the season opener.
Runners-up of the last season, Sunrisers Hyderabad is one of the most underrated teams in the history of IPL. Last three seasons have been quite good for the franchise as they won the IPL in 2016, qualified for playoffs in 2017 and were the runners-up in 2018.
The Hyderabad based franchise will be looking forward to winning their second IPL title as they have a quite formidable squad for the upcoming edition of IPL. As always, their bowling will be their biggest strength, but their batting is not to be discounted either.
Here, we take a look at three batsmen from Sunrisers Hyderabad to watch out for.
#3 Manish Pandey
The extremely talented right-hand batsman, Manish Pandey shot to prominence when he became the first Indian batsman to hit a century in IPL 2009 at a very young age of 18. He had slammed 114 runs off 73 balls with the help of 10 fours and 4 sixes in that innings. Since then, he has been a consistent performer in IPL.
But the Karnataka batsman had a forgettable IPL season last year after being purchased by Sunrisers Hyderabad for a whopping sum of ₹11 crore. He could not live up to his price tag as he could not perform according to his caliber and was unimpressive. This season, he will surely want to do well for his franchise SRH.
So far, the 29-year-old has played a total of 118 matches in IPL and has scored 2499 runs from them at an average of 28.08 and a strike rate of 119.57 with 114 being his highest score. Meanwhile, he has hit 12 fifties and 1 hundred.
Sunrisers Hyderabad has retained Manish Pandey for the upcoming edition of IPL despite his poor show last season. SRH will expect Manish Pandey to shine with the bat this time around.
It will be interesting to watch if Manish Pandey could meet the expectations of fans and his franchise in IPL 2019.