This edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has already seen its share of theatrics, with Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir, once India teammates, squaring off after a game. With no body-cam footage to rely on, we could only speculate on what was said, but the terse exchange was enough to break the Internet.
But if you’re looking for the most bizarre comment of the season, you need go no further than Aiden Markram, the Sunrisers Hyderabad captain, after the toss against Royal Challengers Bangalore. “I am not too sure, to be honest with you,” said Markram when asked about the continued absence of Umran Malik, who had become the franchise’s version of The Invisible Man. “Obviously, he is a player with the X-factor, and bowls at 150km/h, but I don’t really know what is happening with him behind the scenes.”
That’s right, folks. The captain doesn’t know what’s going on with a thoroughbred pace bowler who had taken 22 wickets for the team last season, whose pace and menace had earned him an India call-up. What Markram’s comments did, however, was train the spotlight squarely on the team management, and what has been a dizzying fall from grace.
For half a decade, between 2016 and 2020, Sunrisers were a fixture in the play-offs, winning the trophy in 2016. Since then, they have finished eighth (out of eight), eighth (out of ten) and tenth (out of ten). It isn’t a decline so much as a full-fledged meltdown. And poor displays on the field have been overshadowed by some bizarre decisions off it.
It started with the David Warner fiasco in 2021. We can examine that objectively, without emotion coming into play. In six straight seasons after he joined the franchise before the 2014 campaign – he was not allowed to play the 2018 season in the aftermath of Sandpapergate – Warner never made less than 528 runs. His strike-rate never dropped below 134 (eight runs an over). Across those seasons, he made two centuries and 38 half-centuries, winning the Orange cap for leading run-scorer in 2015, ’17 and ’19.
He was to the franchise what Michael Jordan was to the Chicago Bulls in the 1980s and ’90s, and as talismanic a figure as Tom Brady at the New England Patriots. In 2016, when Virat Kohli’s 973 runs dragged Royal Challengers Bangalore to the final, it was Warner’s dazzling effort up front that set up an upset win for Sunrisers. Warner finished the year with 848 runs. Only Kohli and Jos Buttler (863 runs in 2022) have ever scored more.
In 2021, slap-bang in the middle of a global pandemic, Warner struggled horribly. He was hardly the only one. But after eight innings and 195 runs, he was dumped from the XI and then stripped of the captaincy. Let’s pause for a second. Eight innings. For someone who had never been less than stellar in his previous 80-odd outings for your team. Eight innings was all it took to wield the axe.
Rohit Sharma last scored 500 in an IPL season in 2013. He hasn’t crossed 400 since 2019. But does he look like someone with the executioner’s sword hanging over him? Successful franchises and teams leave the big decisions to that that understand the game and its uncertainties. They’re not trigger-happy.
“For some franchises, it’s a very simple process for the captain and the coach, and maybe someone in cricket operations or other senior players will come up with what they feel is the best team,” said Tom Moody to ESPNCricinfo in the wake of the Markram comments. “There are other teams where there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I think that applies in this situation that we are talking about the Sunrisers. There’s clearly a lot of cooks in the kitchen and we do not know who has got the tallest hat.”
Moody would know. He was, after all, coach when they won the title in 2016. He and Warner didn’t always see eye to eye, but that’s often the case in professional sport where you set aside your differences in pursuit of a common goal. Steven Gerrard won a Champions League for Liverpool under the coaching of Rafael Benitez, yet he always said that he never felt as loved or as secure under him as he had with Gerard Houllier.
Good management in sport usually means staying out of the public eye. Manchester City are a perfect example. Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the chairman, can often be seen at big games, but he’s no rent-a-quote merchant. He leaves the football side of things to those steeped in that, and focusses on building the City brand and revenue.
Also Read: Malik Comments Expose Sunrisers’ Disarray
Todd Boehly, who took over as Chelsea chairman last summer, has already squandered the GDP of a small nation on transfer fees, while coming up with one idiotic comment after another. He has managed to sack Thomas Tuchel, a Champions League-winning coach, and Graham Potter, one of the better young English managers, and it remains to be seen how Mauricio Pochettino will handle the circus when he takes over in the summer.
Sunderland ‘Til I Die, the wonderful documentary about a once-great football club, offers some interesting insights on what happens when clueless folk or those with their own agendas run a sporting organisation. There is a snippet from the second season, after the club have just seen Josh Maja, their promising French striker, depart for greener pastures.
“See the offer you put in [£1.25m] – he’s not worth any more than that,” says Jack Ross, the manager, to Stewart Donald, the club chairman, about Will Grigg, lined up as Maja’s replacement. “Not a chance. If you get him for that many, which is a good offer, then fine, but not at the figures they are talking about. That’s just mental. He’s not worth it.”
Donald gets Grigg. For £3M. Then he proceeds to tell the room: “I can’t afford to pay for the pizzas we’ve ordered now!”
That’s comical. In the case of Sunrisers, there has been vindictiveness too. After Warner was sidelined, there was a concerted effort to malign him through a network of reporters close to the franchise. It didn’t stop there. Rashid Khan, Jason Holder, Vijay Shankar and other players appalled by the management’s treatment of a club legend were not retained before the 2022 auction.
As for the fans, they had made their feelings clear in a letter to the management. “Though he has had a bad season with the bat, he will have our complete support forever,” it said. “I’m sure that with fans constantly by his side and the backing of the management, Warner will be back to his usual run machine form…the last thing we would want to see is our most loved player leave the team.”
But Warner did leave. So did Rashid, who has since won the IPL with Gujarat Titans, and now sits atop the wicket-taking charts as he prepares for another play-off appearance. Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Few of the Hyderabad players did themselves justice this season. But before training guns on them, or even Brian Lara, the coach, pause to think about the environment that has been created around them. Is it conducive to excellence, or does it – as in Umran’s case – drag them down?
After Peter Risdale’s ineptitude as Leeds United’s chairman saw them plummet from the heights of a Champions League semi-final to English football’s third tier in the 2000s, some disillusioned fans used to attend games wearing customised shirts. The message it had was brutal: “2004 Premiership, 2005 Championship, 2007 Sinking Ship, 2008 Abandon Ship.”
The Sunrisers’ ownership and management should thank their lucky stars that the IPL doesn’t have relegation.