IPL 2018: SRH announce Alex Hales as replacement for David Warner

Sunrisers Hyderbad have replaced unavailable captain and opener David Warner with English opener Alex Hales for IPL 2018. According to the BCCI release, Warner has been replaced by the England opener, who was bought for his base price of INR 1 crore from the Registered and Available Player Pool (RAPP) list on Saturday.

The ball-tampering scandal that led to Steve Smith and Warner being banned from the Indian Premier League 2018 by the BCCI has led to the change in personnel for an otherwise settled SRH line-up. The team already announced New Zealand captain Kane Williamson as captain of the side and Hales is now expected to share the opening duties with Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan.

Hales is the only English player to score a T20I century till date and also the only Englishman to feature in the top ten of ICC T20I rankings for batsmen. In 52 T20Is, he has nearly 1,500 runs at an average of over 31 and strike rate of almost 140. In his T20 career that has seen him play 174 matches, he has scored 4,704 runs at an average of almost 30 and strike rate in excess of 140.

While those numbers are impressive, they pale in comparison to the player he is replacing. Since IPL 2014, he has scored 2,579 at an average of 52.63 and strike rate of almost 150. He also scored 26 fifties and a century in that period.

Despite his proven track record in T20s, he went unsold in IPL Auction 2018 although he just had a base price of 1 crore while his compatriots Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and Chris Woakes attracted plenty of attention.

In the recently-completed Pakistan Super League, Hales didn't make a pressing case for being a replacement as his top score of 46 for Islamabad United came in the opening game of the tournament, following which he didn't cross 20 for the rest of the tournament.

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