Srinagar: Former India batter Virender Sehwag has hit out at young Pacer Umran Malik for not learning anything from South Africa pace legend Dale Steyn for so long and making same mistakes.
Sunrisers Hyderabad ended its season in Indian Premier League with a loss against Mumbai Indians on Sunday at Wankhede.
SRH posted a strong score of 200/5 in 20 overs but was let down by its bowling unit, as Mumbai Indians chased down the target with 2 overs to spare. Mumbai all-rounder Cameron Green smashed his maiden IPL century in the final ball of the chase, as they qualified for the playoffs after RCB – the other competitor for playoff berth – lost its final match against Gujarat Titans later in the night.
For the match, Hyderabad made a couple of changes to their playing eleven and included out-of-form Umran Malik in the lineup.
However, the J&K pacer failed to make a mark in the SRH’s final match of the season as well, conceding 41 runs off three overs.
Former India opener Virender Sehwag lashed out at Malik who is considered fastest ever Indian pacer for not learning anything from Dale Steyn’s despite working with him for some time now.
“You can only win by dismissing those batters. (Markram had kept) Fine leg, square leg, and deep midwicket, and asked the bowler to bowl a back-of-the-length delivery. But the batters didn’t make a mistake. SRH took the chance, but the batters smashed them all around the park,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
“The bowlers weren’t pretty good. The captain could’ve asked them to keep one of long-on and long-off. The thing was, you failed to stop the flow of runs altogether”.
“If it were a South African pacer, I could’ve understood that he wouldn’t want to bowl too full. But Umran Malik… the problem is that he keeps shuffling his length. He doesn’t have the experience yet. He might have worked a lot with Dale Steyn, but he hasn’t really got the idea of his length. Despite working with Steyn for so long and learning under him, he’s doing the same mistakes that he did last year,” Sehwag said.
Umran Malik ended his IPL 2023 campaign with only five wickets to his name in 8 matches, conceding at a poor economy rate of 10.85.