Sunil Gavaskar feels coaches in IPL should be held to similar treatment, after seeing David Warner being sacked following Sunrisers Hyderabad’s dismal start to the season.
The Indian Premier League Season 14 had to be suspended due to Covid-19 after 29 games but the T20 league had given cricketing fraternity plenty of talking points by the time it had to be paused. Among the biggest topics of discussion was the sacking of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) skipper David Warner.
Sunil Gavaskar Questions Why Coaches Can’t Be Sacked Or Changed Midway And Treated Similarly Like SRH Skipper David Warner
David Warner wasn’t just removed as skipper by the Sunrisers management after the team’s dismal start to the campaign but also dropped from the playing XI. While opinions on the subject are divided, Indian cricket great Sunil Gavaskar feels coaches should be given the same treatment as captains when teams go through such phases.
“Hyderabad will also get time to think about its decision to not just sack David Warner as the captain but even to drop him from the playing XI. Warner was getting runs but not in the same assertive manner of earlier years.
“Still, with little support from the others, those runs were precious. Yet, he was left out of the playing XI, which was strange. Without the cares of captaincy, he could have been the galvanizing batsman that the team needed,” Sunil Gavaskar wrote in Sportstar.
“While the rights and wrongs of dropping him as captain could well be debated for long, the question that needs to be asked is if captains can be changed midway, why can’t coaches be treated the same?
“In football, the moment a team starts faltering, it’s the manager who is shown the exit door, so why not in cricket too?” he added, citing the examples of football where it’s the coach who often takes the boot for team’s dismal showing.
SRH handed over the reins to Kane Williamson after suffering defeats in five of their six matches under David Warner’s leadership. However, the move did not yield immediate dividends as the Orange Army was handed a 55-run drubbing by the Rajasthan Royals, thus suffering their 6th loss.
With 5447 runs, David Warner is fifth on the list of the leading run-getters in the IPL and the highest run-getter among overseas players. With 50 half-centuries, he has the maximum fifties in the IPL history and he is the only player to have won the Orange Cap a record three times – in 2015, 2017, and 2019.
The Australian himself has been in the indifferent form of late and a far cry from the destructive batsman as he had a strike rate of just 110.28 in the IPL 2021 managing 193 runs averaging 32.16 in 6 games.
Sunil Gavaskar: IPL 2021’s Suspension Could Well Be A Blessing In Disguise For Sunrisers Hyderabad
By the time IPL 2021 was suspended, SRH had only managed to bag one win from seven matches. Though a lot of teams will be upset to have lost the winning momentum, Sunil Gavaskar feels Hyderabad would be relieved to see the tournament being suspended considering the run they were on.
“Sunrisers Hyderabad had a forgettable beginning and would have been relieved that the event had to be suspended…the suspension could well be a blessing in disguise as it allows time for a calm, cool and proper introspection rather than in the hurly-burly of the tournament itself,” he asserted.
The franchise had a disastrous start to their campaign in 2021 losing 6 of their first 7 matches as the Orange Army is languishing at the bottom of the points table when the IPL was suspended indefinitely.