SRH team preview: David Warner, Bhuvneshwar Kumar to lead dark horses' charge in IPL 2021

The dark horses among the IPL teams since their inception in 2013, the Sunrisers Hyderabad have had an interesting run at the tournament. After an impressive start to their IPL campaign saw them reach the playoffs in their first season, SRH have made it past the group stage in each year except 2014 and 2015. The SRH team's best performances at the tournament came in 2016 - when were crowned as the champions and in 2018 when they finished as the runners-up after going down to the MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings. Having finished in 3rd place in 2020, David Warner will hope to lead the side to their second title this season.

Sunrisers Hyderabad players gear up for IPL 2021 season

Having made it to the playoffs last season despite multiple seaon-defining injuries to Mitchell Marsh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Wriddhiman Saha and Vijay Shankar early in the season, the SRH side will come into this season high on confidence and hoping to make good use of the players they discovered under tough circumstances in 2020. The most notable of these of course, will be the yorker king, T Natarajan, who has since made an excellent debut for the national side. However, the team has been health a huge blow ahead of this season, as they will may not be able to play one of their most senior batsmen - Kane Williamson - for a majority of the season due to an injury the Kiwi skipper sustained earlier in the year. 

IPL teams: Sunrisers Hyderabad players list for IPL 2021 season

Going into the IPL 2021 auction with one of the smallest purses of the year at ₹10.75 crore, the SRH team added only three players - Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb Zadran, and J Suchith - to their roster this year. Choosing to stick with what has worked for them, here is what the SRH team will look like for the 2021 season:

David Warner (c), Kane Williamson, Jonny Bairstow (wk), Manish Pandey, Sreevats Goswami (wk), Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Priyam Garg, Vijay Shankar, Abhishek Sharma, Abdul Samad, Virat Singh, Mitchell Marsh, Jason Holder, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T. Natarajan, Sandeep Sharma, Khaleel Ahmed, Siddarth Kaul, Basil Thampi, Jagadeesha Suchith, Kedar Jadhav, Mujeeb-ur-Rahman

With Mitchell Marsh pulling out of the tournament at the 11th hour, the side has rushed to announce that Jason Roy - who is coming off a brilliant stint in India with the England cricket team - will be joining the team as a top-order batsman. 

SRH IPL 2021 schedule

As per the SRH IPL 2021 schedule, the David Warner-led side will take on Eoin Morgan and his KKR team in their opening match of the IPL 2021 on April 11 in Chennai. The game is scheduled to begin at 7:30 PM IST. Here is the rest of the side's schedule for the season:

Image credits: AP