'When Conditions Don't Favour...': Former Indian Spinner Opens Up On SRH Pitfalls After GT Humbling

Sunrisers Hyderabad went dow to a 82-run defeat to Gujarat Titans at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Tuesday as GT climbed to the top of the IPL 2026 table with the playoff race heating up towards the business end of the tournament.

Fifties from Sai Sudharsan and Washington Sundar powered the hosts to their total, before three-wicket hauls from Jason Holder and Kagiso Rabada enabled Shubman Gill and his side to restrict SRH to barely half the target.

The defeat turned out to be SRH’s fifth defeat of the season as the side from Hyderabad remain third in the table with 14 points from 12 outings. Former Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin expressed concerns over SRH’s ability to navigate tracks that pose a challenge to their all-out attacking style of cricket.

“SRH is a boom or bust team, and with some life on the wicket, they’d struggle a bit,” he began.

“Most teams are building their teams at the auction with high scoring ground and flat wickets in mind. But, given such conditions as in Ahmebabd, they’d be a bit more conservative with their approach,” Ashwin explained.

“So the conditions and requirement of the IPL decides how you pick your team,” Ashwin said.

“For instance, SRH know they have a high-scoring home pitch and they draft they side based on that, but they’d have to adapt to other conditions on the road,” the former all-rounder said.

“SRH have a very strong unit and they can challenge for the top-two spots, but their only pitfall is that, when the conditions don’t favour high-scoring games, I feel they trap themselves by trying to attack a bit too much,” he concluded.