Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), on Thursday (February 23), named South Africa star Aiden Markram as their captain ahead of the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2023). The upcoming season will see the right-handed batsman leading an IPL time for the first time in his career.
His IPL career began in 2022 with Sunrisers Hyderabad. In his maiden season, he emerged as one of SRH’s key players and finished the tournament by scoring 381 runs at an average of 47.63 with a strike-rate of over 139 with three fifties.
Aiden Markram, Mayank Agarwal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were reportedly in race to become the next captain of the team. And the South African pipped his teammates after recently leading sister franchise of SRH -Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the SA20 title earlier in the month.
He led the team from the very front. The South Africa star finished the tournament as the third highest run-scorer and was one of the only three players to score a century.
“THE. WAIT. IS. OVER. #OrangeArmy, say hello to our new captain Aiden Markram,” wrote SRH.
THE. WAIT. IS. OVER. ⏳#OrangeArmy, say hello to our new captain Aiden Markram ?#AidenMarkram #SRHCaptain #IPL2023 | @AidzMarkram pic.twitter.com/3kQelkd8CP
— SunRisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) February 23, 2023
Aiden Markram interested in leading SRH:
Even before his appointment as SRH captain, Aiden Markram had made it clear that he would like to lead the side. The star batsman, who led South Africa to their first and so far only U19 World Cup title in 2014, said that he would respect the team-management’s decision before expressing his desire to be the captain.
“What’s going to happen, to be honest… either way we back the management’s decision about who they want to be in charge. Becoming the captain is not the be all and end all. You can be in some form of leadership role too. But I am okay with captaincy, it’s something that I enjoy doing,” Aiden Markram said before SA20 final.
Markram will be looking to change his team’s fortunes in IPL 2023. The Hyderabad-based outfit has not really managed to do well in recent seasons. In the previous two seasons, they could not make it to the playoffs. Meanwhile, IPL 2023 is scheduled to start on March 31.
SRH squad for IPL 2023:
Abdul Samad, Aiden Markram, Rahul Tripathi, Glenn Phillips, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Umran Malik, Harry Brook, Mayank Agarwal, Heinrich Klaasen, Adil Rashid, Mayank Markande, Vivrant Sharma, Samarth Vyas, Sanvir Singh, Upendra Yadav, Mayank Dagar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Anmolpreet Singh, Akeal Hosein, Abhishek Sharma, Marco Jansen, Washington Sundar, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Kartik Tyagi