Former SRH captain David Warner was not seen at the ground in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s clash against the Rajasthan Royals in the 40th match of the Indian Premier League at the Dubai International Stadium.
He was not part of the XI after not being able to perform in the first two matches of the UAE leg, but not even being at the ground made few eyebrows raise and naturally questions were asked to the management.
Answering those questions, head coach Trevor Bayliss said, "We can't make the finals, so we made a decision to get the youngsters to experience not just the matches, but time around the ground and around the set-up. He wasn't the only experienced player that we'd left back at the hotel as Kedar Jadhav and Shahbaz Nadeem also didn’t travel with the team.”
Saying that this policy might continue for a few more games, Bayliss added that the management will sit down in a day or two and pick a team and pick a squad of 18 that will travel for the remaining games.
“Dave's obviously watching the game at the hotel and giving his support to the boys. Just like everyone else. We're all in this together,” said the 58-year-old.
With Warner himself tweeting that he wouldn’t be seen at the ground in an SRH camp anymore (the tweet was later removed), it is expected that the 34-year-old, who has been the Orange Cap winner in 2015, 2017 and 2019 playing with the orange army and has scored a whopping 4014 in 95 games at 49.56 per game and a strike rate of 142.59, would be parting ways with the side in the next year’s mega auction.
“This is the last year before the mega auction, those decisions will be made further down the line. He's been a great contributor to Hyderabad for a number of years now and he's very well-respected. And with the number of runs he's scored, I'm sure he's got a lot more runs in him in the IPL,” Bayliss said when asked about Warner’s future.