Bengaluru: Sunrisers Hyderabad to be without regular captain and pace-setter Pat Cummins The Australian is currently struggling to regain full bowling fitness for at least the first two weeks of the IPL.head coach Daniel Vettori The move was aimed at allaying concerns over Cummins’ condition and emphasizing that the pacer’s overall health was fine.
“His fitness is excellent. He’s been out for a long time, so he’s had time to really work on strength and conditioning,” Vettori said at Friday’s pre-match press conference.The former New Zealand captain said the challenge will be rebuilding Cummins’ bowling workload.“The only issue is his bowling load. Once he gets the all-clear from Cricket Australia, he will need to go through a grueling process to get confident and strong in his bowling. He will continue to improve over the next few weeks and hopefully we will have a clearer timetable in 10 to 12 days,” he explained.Vettori heaps praise on substitute captain Ishan KishanApart from winning the purple card in the T20 World Cup, he also led Jharkhand to its maiden T20 title against Syed Mushtaq Ali.“He joined the team last year and the leadership he showed throughout the season, especially in the second half when he took over the wicket, really brought energy to the team and set the stage for our second half. When Cummins unfortunately exited the initial stages of the tournament, we obviously had some decisions to make. His experience with the state team was particularly impressive and he was in really good shape. So, between Abhishek (Sharma) and himself, we feel like we have a really good leadership team leading us this year. “Vettori also added that three young Indians, led by Karnataka southpaw R Smaran, are vying for a spot in the XI. The other two players are Aniket Verma and Salil Arora.
