Sunfisers Hyderabad had a rough outing in the ongoing edition of the IPL 2023. Their IPL 2023 run ended after suffering an eight-wicket defeat against Mumbai Indians on Sunday. The 2016 IPL winners won only four games in 14 matches this season. Big names like Aiden Markram, Mayank Agarwal, and Glenn Phillips failed to leave a mark and as a result, SRH finished at the bottom of the points table.
SRH has always been known for its lethal bowling lineup. One such bower among the lot is Umran Malik, who was the star with the ball during last year’s IPL. Talking about this year, he has been a major disappointment for SRH. The Jammu and Kashmir speedster leaked 41 runs in the match against Mumbai Indians and went wicketless. After his torrid run with the ball, former India cricketer Virender Sehwag criticized Umran’s bowling and went on to say that he has not learned anything from SRH’s bowling coach Dale Steyn.
“Umran Malik's problem is that he keeps shuffling his length. He doesn't have the experience yet. He might have worked a lot with Dale Steyn, but he hasn't really got the idea of his length. Despite working with Steyn for so long and learning under him, he's doing the same mistakes that he did last year,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
Umran took part in 14 games in the IPL 2022 and picked up 22 wickets. In this year’s IPL, he only played eight matches and took five wickets. Even former India cricketer Zaheer Khan also spoke about Umran Malik. Earlier, the SRH pacer bowled the fastest ball in international cricket as he bowled at the speed of 155 kph against Sri Lanka. He also broke the record of India's ace pacer Jasprit Bumrah who used to hold the record of bowling at 153.36 kph.
"Umran Malik has not been handled well I felt by the franchise, (in) the way he should have been handled by the franchise, (in) the way his services should have been utilised by SRH. That's something which was evident," Zaheer Khan told NDTV.