Courtesy: BCCI/IPL
Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) lost their fifth match of the Indian Premier League (2025) season against Mumbai Indians (MI) by four wickets with 11 balls remaining after managing to score just 162 runs in the innings despite being heralded as arguably the most destructive batting lineup in the league. After winning just two matches in the first half of the season, SRH head coach Daniel Vettori spoke about how the batting conditions were difficult at the Wankhede Stadium, but still, he urged his batters to adapt better to such things in the tournament.
Notably, the two wins for SRH in their first seven matches of the tournament came when there were two great batting pitches produced at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad, which is their home ground. While playing against Rajasthan Royals (RR) in their IPL 2025 season opener, SRH scored 286 runs before restricting the opposition to 242 runs, while their second win came when they chased down a 246-run target with eight wickets in hand and nine balls to spare versus Punjab Kings (PBKS).
Daniel Vettori addressed the post-match press conference following SRH’s latest defeat, detailing how the pitch at the Wankhede Stadium didn’t allow fluent stroke play for most of the night. He was quoted as saying, as per Cricbuzz, “I feel like no-one really has control over their surface. So there's a little bit of luck involved in terms of coming up against wickets that don't suit us. But I think there has to be more to it from our side that we have to adapt.”
We're not expecting to go over around the country and come up on belters: Daniel Vettori
As the head coach of SRH, he also gave an insight to how the players and team management have a fair idea about how the pitches won’t be good for batting all the time in the IPL. He remarked, “We know that conditions like this exist in Chennai, sometimes Ahmedabad. So we're not expecting to go over around the country and come up on belters. So the ball's in our court to realise that.”
“And I think we did it relatively well today.It was just incredibly tough through those middle stages. And I've credited Mumbai, how well they bowled throughout that innings,” he added.
