This year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 auction was a disappointment to the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) fans.
The SRH is the only team in the IPL with no local players. The fact that no Hyderabad based player would be a part of IPL 2021, gained criticism for SRH.
Fans and political leaders of Telangana expressed disappointment with the SRH on non-inclusion of local players.
In the now concluded auction of players for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021, the Hyderabad based franchise SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) bought and included three players into the team–Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb Ur Rehman and Jagadeesha Suchith.
As per fans, in the IPL, unlike Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) the SRH did not a give chance to local players, instead chose players from different regions.
Veteran cricketer and the President of the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) Mohammed Azharuddin in a tweet said, he was disappointed not to see a single player from Hyderabad on the team.
Hanuma Vihari, a Telugu player and a right handed batsman also shared a cryptic message about remaining unsold at the IPL 2021 auction.
Guntur based Prithvi Yarra, the only Telugu player on the squad, was also left off from the team before the IPL 2021 auction.
This behavior and discrimination not only disappointed fans but also showed the less number of opportunities given to local players from SRH.
The criticism started from the 18th of February, the IPL 2021 auction day and is still continuing.
Response of fans over non inclusion of local players:
Upender Jillapally, a citizen of Hyderabad said, “Why don’t you name the team by some other name? If you take Hyderabad’s name, why aren’t there any city-based or even Telugu players in the team? All the franchises maintain local players, except SRH.”
Another Surender Nagesh said, “Surely, SRH could’ve done better. Wonder what the SRH team is doing for the sport and the local talent here in the two Telugu states…We want more local talent in the team.”
Rajesh Gubbala, asked, “Don’t you have any faith in local players?” He said, “SRH fans, please take a note. Do not blindly follow the team which failed to pick up our players who were available for low prices in the auction.”
Many fans asked for a rule, where teams should mandatorily have local players. Sourav Sinha, another SRH fan said, “We are unable to connect to the local players! There should be a rule to have one or two local players mandatorily in all teams!”
Sidharth, another fan, said, “SRH always hurts me in this matter. Having Hyderabad in its name isn’t enough, you should encourage at least one local player in a season.”
Sainath Gajendran said, “There should be a requirement that 20 per cent of the team comes from that city!”
The SRH squad for IPL 2021 are:
David Warner (Captain,) Manish Pandey, Kane Williamson, Jonny Bairstow, Wriddhiman Saha, Shreevats Goswami, Priyam Garg, Virat Singh, Rashid Khan, Vijay Shankar, Mohammad Nabi, Abhishek Sharma, Mitchell Marsh, Jason Holder, Abdul Samad, T. Natarajan, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Basil Thampi, Shahbaz Nadeem, Siddharth Kaul, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jagadeesha Suchith, Kedar Jadhav and Mujeeb Ur Rahman.
Stay tuned for further updates.
