Sunrisers Hyderabad send their players, support staff on a vacation in the middle of woeful IPL 2025 season
With their next IPL game almost a week later, the SRH management sent the entire team, along with the support staff, to Maldives on a retreat.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have their ongoing IPL 2025 season hanging by a thread. In nine matches thus far, the 2016 champions managed just three wins to stand eighth in the points table. With their next game almost a week later, against the Gujarat Titans, the management sent the entire team, along with the support staff, to Maldives on a retreat.
The management had arranged the trip after their win by five wickets against Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Friday. The players reached the island country on Saturday itself, with the franchise posting a video of the arrival of the team members with the caption: “Sun, sea, and a team retreat for our Risers in the Maldives!”
SRH players and support staff will likely travel back to India early next week. They are expected to land in Ahmedabad by April 30, with the side slated to take on the Shubman Gill-led side on May 2.
How did SRH bounce back in Chennai?
The slow and tricky batting surfaces have been the enemy of the much-feared SRH batting line-up, which was touted at the start of the season to cross the 300-run mark in the IPL. However, it was on those surfaces where SRH got exposed and saw them lose to Mumbai Indians in an away game and two matches at home in Uppal.
Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Daniel Vettori said that working around their batting line-up and getting the match-ups right with Kamindu Mendis in the mix served the team well against Chennai Super Kings helped them snap their losing streak.
"No, we haven't (done well on those pitches)," Vettori had said on Friday. "We've encountered them away and we've encountered them at home, so it hasn't quite matched up with our expectations around the surfaces. But the onus is on us to adapt and understand what's required."
The former New Zealand captain said moving around their players was crucial for SRH against CSK as Mendis played a vital role both with the bat and the ball.
"That's why the likes of Kamindu came into the team. That's why there was the shuffle in the batting order, putting (Heinrich) Klaasen up, Nitish (Kumar Reddy) down, to give us a more balanced approach to a chase in particular," he said.
"The initial plan was around left-right-hand combinations, and that's in a way to counter Noor (Ahmad) and Jaddu (Ravindra Jadeja) and how good they are through those middle stages."
"A lot of the logic was picking him (Mendis) for this ground. We knew what sort of surface we'd come up against and to have a batsman who can play all types of spin, be aggressive, and hit a multitude of shots, that was the starting point," he added.
