“It’s [about] trying to find that balance and I think that’s what RCB [Royal Challengers Bengaluru] have got. They’ve got that balance right,” Moody said. “So, I’m not against the brand but you’ve got to try to balance it out when you’re talking about the salary cap and everything.”
“So, overall, not a lot’s gone wrong. I think, like every team, we’ll go away from the tournament, reflect. There’s obviously a lot of time now before the next IPL, you know, when you start to think about who you retain and then there’ll be another auction. So that’s a long way away”
James Franklin
The problem with finishing third, and not first or second, on the IPL 2026 league table meant SRH had to play the Eliminator, and not get two bites of the cherry the way the top-two teams do.
“I don’t think it [the season] went wrong. I mean, we’ve won nine out of 14 round-robin games. We ended up third on the table due to run rate,” Franklin said at the press conference after the match. “I think overall we’ve had a really good season. I don’t think too much has gone wrong.”
Franklin pointed to the emergence of the young crop of Indian players as a big positive for SRH.
“Shivang, Praful Hinge, Sakib Hussain, Salil Arora, [R] Smaran. So there’s five in our starting XI that have come in this year,” he said. “Which is great, which is what you want as a franchise is to have the emergence of young talent coming through every year as well as obviously your senior players, your senior contributors, which again, we’ve had the top four have been amazing. You know, the runs that they’ve amassed, the games that they’ve won, the partnerships that they’ve had have been brilliant.
“And then I think the other factor to that – and the biggest compliment that we’ve had within the playing group – has obviously been Nitish Kumar Reddy, the way that he’s made lovely contributions with the bat and taken some vital wickets for us. That is the beauty of having a genuine allrounder in your team – they can make those nice contributions both with bat and ball.
“So, overall, not a lot’s gone wrong. I think, like every team, we’ll go away from the tournament, reflect. There’s obviously a lot of time now before the next IPL, you know, when you start to think about who you retain and then there’ll be another auction. So that’s a long way away.”
