“Don’t think we shuffled unnecessarily, we played the best 12 available,” says Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Lara

It was Aiden Markram’s maiden outing as captain in the Indian Premier League. So was Brian Lara’s at the helm of an IPL franchises’ coaching staff. But the captain-coach duo failed to do wonders with Sunrisers Hyderabad as the team is in danger of finishing at the bottom of the Indian Premier League points table.

“We were both newcomers, the captain and the coach. But in terms of leadership, on and off the field, I felt we as a unit were learning as we go along. It is not something that comes easily,” Lara said here on Saturday.

“I think Aiden did a tremendous job and we will do some sort of review and reflection to see how we can work things out for the betterment next year. But it is always going to be difficult coming into an environment and trying to lead, and if I can speak for myself, I will definitely learn from this experience.”

Despite Sunrisers having used a whopping 23 players so far, Lara didn’t feel the team unnecessarily tinkered around with the unit.

“This game tomorrow and the previous game, you want to see players come out, so we are relaxed in our selection policy and still put a team out on park that will compete. And the South Africans came late, Washington (Sundar) got injured midway, he is a huge player for us,” Lara said.

“I don’t think we shuffled too much unnecessarily. We played the best 12 that we can find. We have to learn from and it’s not a great idea to think about what went wrong.”