Opinion: Warner or Williamson, who should captain Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2019
Apart from having good players, the presence of an excellent leader is a key to a team's success. Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) is having a unique conundrum in this aspect. They have two good leaders who have done impressively well in the past: Kane Willaimson and David Warner. While Warner helped SRH to win their maiden title in 2016, Williamson led Warner-less SRH to 2018 finals.
With both the players available for 2016 champions, Let's take a look who should be leading Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2019.
David Warner was bought by Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2014 IPL auction and was appointed as their captain in 2015. Although SRH narrowly failed to qualify for the knock-out phase in 2015, Warner won the Orange cap that season. In his second stint as the skipper of Sunrisers, he led the team to its first title with 69 runs of 38 balls in the final against Royal Challengers Bangalore. He finished the season with a mammoth 848 runs second only to Virat Kohli.
In 2017 Warner became the first player to have won the Orange cap twice, with 641 runs at an average of 58.27 in that edition. Though Sunrisers were not able to retain their title in 2017, they finished fourth after losing to Knight Riders in the eliminator.
Warner proved to be a great choice to lead the Orange Army until 2018. However, he stepped down as the captain of Sunrisers after the ball-tampering controversy. Later on, BCCI did not allow him to participate in the eleventh edition of IPL. Therefore SRH announced Kane Williamson as their new leader.
Williamson joined the Orange Army in 2016 and lifted the IPL trophy with them in his very first season. In IPL 2018, Kane was phenomenal, both as a player and as the captain of Sunrisers. Under his captaincy, the team finished as runner-up after Chennai Super Kings defeated them by 8 wickets in the final. Williamson was the leading run scorer of the league with 735 runs in 16 matches winning the Orange cap.
During the suspension period, Warner played in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and in the T20 league of Canada and his lack of game time experience was clearly visible in his performance. Hence, he will be under immense pressure to perform well in the tournament. The tag of captaincy will only increase the pressure on him.
Williamson should lead Sunrisers Hyderabad this season as he done exceedingly well as a captain of SRH last season. Also, Kane has had a brilliant 2018 season as a captain of the New Zealand cricket team.
On the other side, Warner would want to score big in IPL without any captaincy pressure so that he will in a good shape for the ICC Cricket Cricket World Cup. Also, Warner will leave the tournament midway to take part in Australia's World Cup preparation camp.