Moody confident Hales can fill Warner void

Alex Hales

Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Tom Moody has faith in the abilities of England opener Alex Hales who has been signed to the franchise as a replacement for the banned David Warner.

The disgraced former Australia vice-captain was banned for twelve months by Cricket Australia for his part in a plot to tamper with the ball in the third Test against South Africa at Newlands.

Hales may not have the T20 record that Warner boasts but he has shown the ability to play match-winning innings in the shortest format for the Notts Outlaws and England.

Sunrisers coach Tom Moody hopes Hales strikes up a fruitful partnership with Shikhar Dhawan, saying: “We strongly felt that he is of international quality, and being a right-hander, should be the perfect complement to left-handed Shikhar Dhawan.

“So we opt to use him at the top of the order for a left-right combination.

“And he’s recently dedicated to white-ball cricket. He’s fully committed to develop and grow as a white-ball cricketer, and that’s important to our philosophies as a management group. We believe in identifying talent prepared to grow as individual cricketers because we, obviously, as a franchise will grow with them.”

Moody

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Warner has led the scoring over the past two seasons for a team that he skippered to the title in 2016 leaving Hales with a daunting task.

Moody feels that his team will mount a serious challenge despite losing their skipper to Cricket Australia’s sanctions and a banning by the BCCI.

He said: “Yes, Dave has been important for us the last couple of years, and he’s led the team well. He’s batted very well, but we feel that the players we have in our squad are capable of taking the opportunity.

“Other teams have lost players to injuries too. We’re replacing a good captain in Warner, who was vice-captain of Australian team, with another international captain. There’s nothing we can do with what’s happened with Warner. We’ve moved on from that, so it’s probably a good opportunity for everyone else to move on.”

The Sunrisers begin their IPL campaign on April 9th when they take on the returning Rajasthan Royals at the The Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad.

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