IPL 2025: Ishan Kishan To Adam Zampa, The Five Sunrisers Hyderabad Players To Watch Out For
SRH's IPL 2025 season will focus on key players like Cummins, Head, and Klaasen, but emerging stars like Sharma, Kishan, Reddy, Shami, and Zampa will be crucial for success.
Like with every other franchise, a lot of limelight for Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH)’s upcoming IPL 2025 season will go to the charismatic skipper Pat Cummins, big-hitting Travis Head and middle-order beast, and one of the best T20 players in the world, Heinrich Klaasen.
But these players won’t determine whether SRH will end their search for a second title or not. All three of them had excellent performances to show for in IPL 2024 but the team still fell well short of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the first Qualifier and then in the final. It’s more about how well the players around them — the upcoming Indian stars and underrated overseas faces — can chip in that’ll dictate their title run.
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Below, we look at five of these crucial cogs:
Abhishek Sharma: Although he had scored over 400 runs in a season before, Abhishek had his true breakout in IPL 2024. The left-handed opener smashed 484 runs at a strike rate of 204.21, laying the foundation of SRH’s high scores in the powerplay while also chipping in with the ball. His all-round show got him into the Indian T20I side, where he has now cemented his place as well.
IPL 2025 will be all about if he can go one step better. There have been a bunch of brilliant talents in the IPL who have failed to maintain consistency after a season or two and then struggled win the favour of national selectors. SRH would want him to convert his rollicking starts into centuries like he has done for India, while the national team would hope he gets more opportunities to bowl and develop further as an allrounder.
Ishan Kishan: He’s one of those talented players hoping to be back in contention for India. Ishan and Shreyas Iyer lost their central contracts together, but while the latter’s stocks have only grown since, the former has, in Aakash Chopra’s words, disappeared from the limelight and public’s mind. SRH have done well to show Rs. 11 crore worth of trust in him and it’s now on Kishan to repose that and earn his stripes back.
He’s in a way a direct replacement for Aiden Markram, who couldn’t get going last season for the Orange Army and could be the X-factor. It remains to be seen, though, whether a change in environment away from his long-term team Mumbai Indians gets the better or worse out of him. It’ll also be interesting how SRH manage to keep their combination tactically solid with these three left-handers at the top of the order.
Nitish Kumar Reddy: Like Abhishek, Nitish Kumar Reddy jumped from SRH to India after IPL 2024. He won the Emerging Player of the Year Award for his allround skills as a middle-to-lower-order batter and part-time pacer. IPL 2025 would be about him using all that India exposure to mature into a lynchpin of the side with a much more set role at number four or five and a bigger bowling workload in different situations.
Reddy’s talent is obvious, but teams will be much better prepared for his technical weaknesses. He will need to navigate that alongside his recent fitness issues. Some fans must already be seeing a future SRH captain in him–and this season will be a big test of his prospects as potentially one of India’s best all-round talents.
Mohammed Shami: SRH really needed an experienced pacer to take some load off Cummins’ fast-bowling responsibilities and they got perhaps the best available Indian in the auction. Shami, though still a bit gingerly after his long-term IPL injury, has the potential to be a season-defining signing for SRH.
Despite not looking the part of a T20-style pacer, Shami’s control of length is invaluable in the IPL. He didn’t play in 2024 but in the previous two seasons, he picked up 20 wickets at 24.40 and 28 at 18.64, respectively, which was a huge differential for the Gujarat Titans who stumbled to eighth without him.
If he can hit the ground running and bring the same form to Hyderabad, he and Cummins will form one of the most versatile pace duos in the tournament.
Adam Zampa: Despite his obvious talent and vast success on the international stage, Zampa has never quite cracked it in the IPL. It’s a league where unless you are as good as Rashid Khan in your all-round game, overseas spinners aren’t seen as worthy of one of the four precious spots.
But the lack of any other good spin options at SRH apart from him and a recently off-colour Rahul Chahar — plus the fact that the Australian hasn’t pulled out of the season yet — suggests that Zampa might play a key role in Cummins’ plans. It’s exactly what he does for Australia. Seeing that pan out against a huge assortment of opponents and good spin-hitters should be quite interesting and certainly worth keeping an eye out on.
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