South Africa’s Aiden Markram was announced as the new captain of the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) franchise for the upcoming IPL 2023 edition which begins on March 31. He will take over from Kane Williamson, who was released by SRH following a poor IPL 2022.
Aiden Markram will be heading into the competition on the back of a successful season with Sunrisers Eastern Cape in the inaugural SA20 edition. He led the SEC to the title win by defeating Pretoria Capitals in the final.
The highly-rated Proteas star hit 366 runs, including a century, in 12 matches and picked up 11 wickets in SA20 2023.
"In terms of the responsibility, yeah, you do naturally enjoy it. You always want to win as sportsmen and when you happen to be the captain, it even exaggerates it more. You want the team to always do well and satisfy the fans. You want to give your all, if it works out, it works out, it it doesn't, it's part of the game,” Aiden Markram told India Today during a virtual press conference organized by SA20 on Thursday.
Markram had an excellent outing for SRH in IPL 2022, scoring 381 runs at a strike rate of close to 140. He stated that the responsibility of being the captain, is going to be a big step up and he is looking forward to utilizing what he has learned from Faf du Plessis and Kane Williamson.
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"In terms of the idol, I have worked a little bit with Faf du Plessis in the national side, he really opened my eyes to leadership and how he went about things was something that I could relate to quite well. Kane, last year at SRH, was quite similar to Faf in terms of calmness and really getting to back players and make them believe in themselves. So i have taken a lot learnings from spending time with those 2 guys," he added.
Markram will be working with West Indies batting great Brian Lara who is the coach of the Sunrisers Hyderabad and said that he would begin discussions with the coach when he meets him in the next few weeks.
Markram said Lara and he decided that they would begin chatting about the roadmap for SRH when Lara comes to South Africa as the mentor of the West Indies team.
"Very excited. We have worked briefly together last year when he was batting coach and we got on really well, certainly looking forward to working with him. We actually going to meet up now, he is the batting coach for the West Indies Test series. So we are going to see each other a bit in the next two weeks.
We discussed yesterday that that's where we would start our planning in terms of the brand of cricket we would be playing and those sort of things. I am pretty sure we both will be on the same page when it comes to play a nice positive brand of cricket where guys can fully express themselves.
Whichever facet they are confident of executing, they should feel like they have got the full permission to do it. We want the guys to go out there and express themselves fully," he added.
SRH will take on RR in their opening game of IPL 2023 on Sunday, April 2.
(India Today inputs)
