Simarjeet Singh picked up two wickets in the PowerPlay against RR on Sunday © Sportzpics After Simarjeet Singh’s impressive start – two wickets in the first over – to life as a Sunrisers Hyderabad pacer, fast bowling coach James Franklin reckoned both he and the team will have to work out how they can be a fit for each other. The Delhi quick was roped in through the mega auction in November 2024 for a sum of INR 1.50 Crore after two short but effective stints with CSK in 2022 and 2024 – four wickets in six games and five wickets in four games respectively. At the Delhi T20, another league conducted by a state association where the IPL scouts tend to pitch their tents before an auction, he finished with 18 wickets in 10 outings last year. SRH backed up their auction decision on March 23 by chucking him into the playing XI in their season opener – on a flat deck at home where Rajasthan Royals had to chase a gargantuan 287. He conceded 46 runs in three overs, but the two in the wickets column and the timing of the breakthroughs should’ve gladdened SRH and Franklin. The 6’1″ tall pacer brought his hit-the-deck abilities to trouble the RR top-order in the first over. He got Yashasvi Jaiswal to find the point fielder with a cut shot and then bounced out Riyan Parag with a ball at 145 kmph that the RR captain could only pull to Pat Cummins at mid-on. “You know, he’s got some natural pace, he can move the ball through the air and if you’re putting those two things together that obviously becomes quite an attractive skill set for a fast bowler to have and he’s also got a few tricks up his sleeve with slower ball variations,” Franklin said of Simarjeet. “So, yeah, I guess it’s him getting to understand how he fits into our group. Obviously, it’s his first year with us and we’re trying to work out what is the best way to use him. “The first game a couple of days ago, that first over was an unbelievable start for him getting us two massive wickets early and to set that tempo for us as a bowling group in that powerplay was massive. So, yeah, hopefully it’s the start of something nice for him and for us,” Franklin added. Simarjeet is an interesting fit for SRH’s reworked bowling arsenal. Though SRH replaced two stalwarts – Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan – with two others – Mohammed Shami and Harshal Patel, the same kind of shoes weren’t filled as far as bowling phases are concerned. Overs bowled across phases in IPL 2024 Players PowerPlay Middle-overs Death Bhuvneshwar Kumar 40 6 11 T Natarajan 16 16 19.2 Harshal Patel 7 21 21 Between Bhuvneshwar and Natarajan, Cummins got 56 PowerPlay overs last season, even as the two also bowled sufficiently at the death. While Mohammed Shami was predominantly a PowerPlay operator in IPL 2023, SRH will need more up top with the ball, as Harshal has previously succeeded through the middle and at the backend. SRH’s other Indian pacer in the squad – Jaydev Unadkat, who brings the additional left-armer’s angle, was also utilised mainly through the middle. Though Pat Cummins has been an all-phase bowler, SRH’s combination might need them to have another bowler capable of chipping in at the top. They could go to South Africa’s Wiaan Mulder, but that would involve tweaking the overseas composition. Simarjeet bowled just one over in the PowerPlay last season, but did more of it for CSK in IPL 2022, where MS Dhoni even bowled him out at a stretch against Mumbai Indians, with three of the overs coming in the first six. “Having someone like Simarjit take the new ball definitely helps Pat as a captain. Again, we obviously look at our line-up and the bowling dynamics from game to game and it might not always necessarily be that way. But certainly in that first game it worked beautifully for Pat,” Franklin opined. It’s still early days for it to be set in stone that Simarjeet will be one of SRH’s PowerPlay regulars, but repeatedly striking at the start in the opportunities he gets will make a strong case for him. “When I turned up to training camp a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t really seen too much of him, seen a bit of footage, but watching him live in the first session that I was here training was awesome to watch,” Franklin said. Franklin, who joined SRH this season as their fast bowling coach, is hoping to build a working relationship with the young Indian quick as the season progresses. “As far as conversations between myself and Simarjit… we’re just getting to understand each other. I’m certainly giving him some free reign at the moment because I just want to see how he operates and what fields he likes to set and how he likes to bowl in different situations of the game. “And I’m hoping that through the IPL we’ll obviously talk a lot, converse a lot, bounce around a few ideas on obviously how to evolve and get better because these batting groups that we’re coming up against are incredibly dynamic and powerful. So we have to try and obviously combat that through some creativity and some different ways of thinking on how we can manipulate fields, what sort of balls we use at different stages and obviously how best that suits Simarjit as well and how he wants to bowl,” Franklin said.
