Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Tom Moody not worried by team's away game losses

Defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad are yet to register an away win in the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League. David Warner’s side began their title defense in a grand fashion, with two emphatic victories in home conditions at Hyderabad.

However, touring hasn’t proved too successful for SRH so far, as they’ve lost all three away games that they’ve played. Following their first two games, the Sunrisers Hyderabad were handed a defeat at the Wankhede by the Mumbai Indians. SRH then traveled to Kolkata, where the Knight Riders won convincingly by 17 runs.

Their next away fixture came against the Rising Pune Supergiant after two home wins. However, the Sunrisers failed to march to victory once again as MS Dhoni guided RPS home with a last ball four.

The Indian Premier League is patterned after the home-away trend that governs European football. Home turf advantages have been observed over the last few years in the IPL, as teams have defended their grounds on a consistent basis. The Mumbai Indians, for instance, have a fortress called the Wankhede Stadium.

However, the fact that the Sunrisers Hyderabad haven’t been able to register an away win so far hasn’t bothered coach Tom Moody too much. He feels that the difference in conditions between home and away grounds are negligible which haven’t played a significant role in SRH’s away failures.

“Look I am not overly concerned about (no wins away from home). We’ve looked into this – why we dropped three games away from home. In Mumbai we had to field first with very heavy dew… (it was) significant disadvantage.”

“Kolkata we didn’t have rub of the green with some decisions [Uthappa was wrongly given not-out first ball] that should’ve gone our way. So you can write those two games off. We should’ve won in Pune, but a bloke called MS Dhoni got in our way. We’ve all seen what he’s done in the last 10 years,” the former Australian cricketer said.

“So when you really strip it back and analyse it, there’s no massive flaw in what we’re doing away he from home. It’s not that wickets at home are significantly different to anything away from home. There’s no huge advantage at home that we’re taking advantage of. It is pretty simple analysis when you break it down with those three away games that we played. So we look forward to chalking up a win here,” Moody added.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore recently suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Kolkata Knight Riders. The Sunrisers Hyderabad will, therefore, look to exploit RCB’s lack of confidence going into their clash against SRH at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.

However Moody dismissed the idea of being able to replicate the scenes at the Eden Gardens, which saw a batting heavy RCB side fall like nine pins.

“You’d be a fool to think that you could turn up tomorrow night and get a repeat of what happened in Kolkata. We certainly are paying no attention to what happened there. It’s been and gone. And I am sure that they’re probably thinking the same. We’ve obviously got some recent fond memories in this venue so hopefully we can walk away with the same,” Moody stated.

With four wins in the bag, the Sunrisers now find themselves at third place in the standings. SRH will look to win big against the Royal Challengers Bangalore and open their account of away wins this season.