IPL 2024 auction: Pat Cummins or Aiden Markram, who should captain SRH? De Villiers shares his choice
IPL 2024 auction: Pat Cummins or Aiden Markram, who should captain SRH? ABD answers
Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc made heads turn in the IPL 2024 mini-auction, held in Dubai on Dec 19. While Cummins went to the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) for INR 20.50 crore (205 million), Starc was sold for a whopping INR 24.75 crore (247.5 million) to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). With Cummins joining the Hyderabad camp, many speculate him to take over as the Orange Army captain. Cummins has had a dream run in 2023, leading Australia to the WTC and ODI World Cup title.
In IPL 2023, it was South Africa's Aiden Markram who led the SRH camp after leading his side Sunrisers Eastern Cape to the inaugural SA20 championship early this year. However, he could not replicate the same success for the SRH franchise in IPL 2023 as they finished at the bottom. Thus, Markram might be replaced by Cummins but the team management has not given any official statement in this regard.
Former Proteas captain AB de Villiers spoke on the issue and shared his choice on who should lead the Hyderabad-based IPL team.
"I will still go with Aiden Markram as captain. I've played with this guy before. He's got a very, very good leadership brain on his head. I think he'll do better this season, and that's it. And as well. And it has got a very good squad to work with," said De Villiersduring a live session on his YouTube channel.
He added, "I don't think the eight overseas players that you're talking about being big stars is a problem. I think they have a very, very good squad, very well-balanced. I think they're gonna make the knockouts this year. I want my calls to to go all the way and be there at the back end of the IPL."
SRH squad for IPL 2024
Abdul Samad, Abhishek Sharma, Aiden Markram (c), Marco Jansen, Rahul Tripathi, Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, Sanvir Singh, Heinrich Klaasen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Agarwal, T. Natarajan, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Markande, Upendra Singh Yadav, Umran Malik, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Shahbaz Ahmed , Travis Head, Wanindu Hasaranga, Pat Cummins, Jaydev Unadkat, Akash Singh, Jhathavedh Subramanyan.