Daniel Vettori calls SRH a normal team, lashes out at the bowlers during dressing room speech after loss to RCB

In the opener of IPL 2026, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) was outplayed in all departments by the defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.

SRH scored a total just over 200, mostly because of individual brilliance from the stand-in captain Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, and Aniket Verma. Apart from these three, the rest of the team disappointed the SRH head coach and New Zealand cricket legend Daniel Vettori.

SRH shared a back-room video from their official social media accounts after the match. The video captured the match-after speech of the head coach, who massively criticized the bowlers for the defeat against RCB. RCB won the match by 6 wickets and 26 balls to spare, chasing a target of 202.

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SRH bowlers delivered in the arch of the RCB batters, only to be vandalized

Against Jacob Duffy’s back-of-the-length and scrambled seam deliveries, the RCB top order collapses quickly. Duffy, who made his IPL debut last night for RCB, delivered four overs on a trot to clinch Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, and Nitish Kumar Reddy in quick intervals.

In contrast to the Kiwi pacer’s back-of-the-length balls, SRH bowlers went for fuller and uncontrolled pace variations. As the deliveries were in the arches of the Bengaluru batters, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli, and Rajat Patidar did not hesitate to smash the balls hard.

After the match, in the dressing room, Daniel Vettori, who himself was a star bowler for the New Zealand National Cricket Team, pointed out why the opposing side claimed runs with ease against them.

Daniel Vettori expressed his disappointment with his bowling unit

“I think the challenge for us is to understand what we did probably poorly with the ball. And I think the messaging coming into the game was, ‘Can we find a length? Can we fall on our strengths with just a slow ball, slow ball bounces?’ And I think today we were quite a long way off it,” the head coach explained.

“I think 10 full balls went for six. And when you do that, that puts you up against the game. So I don’t want to make this about bowlers not doing their job. I just want to use it as a challenge for the next game. So we understand there’s a rusty performance. We understand we weren’t at our best, but it starts now,” he added.

A few positive notes for SRH ahead of the KKR match

In between the disappointing result and the lackluster bowling performances, the team will enter the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on March 2, with some positive notes as well.

“I think from a batting display to get from that power play to a very good score shows the quality of that top seven and the way that you guys come together in the first game, even some challenging circumstances was really impressive and Ishan (Ishan Kishan) and Classy (Heinrich Klaasen) managing our way through that little bit, Annie (Aniket Verma) at the back end to put us in the score was very impressive from you three,” Vettori said to motivate the troop.

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