Former Australia batter Tom Moody has slammed Rajasthan Royals (RR) captain Sanju Samson over his “tactical blunder” in the IPL 2024 Qualifier 2 clash against SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Friday. RR crashed out of IPL 2024 after a 36-run defeat at the hands of SRH, who will now face Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the final on Sunday. Chasing 176, RR could only reach 139/7 in 20 overs after Shahbaz Ahmed and Abhishek Sharma sparked a mid-innings collapse. The pair shared five wickets between them to help SRH reach the final for the first time in six years.

While keeper-batter Dhruv Jurel scored a half-century for RR in the chase, Moody pointed out that Samson made a “tactical blunder” by not sending Shimron Hetmyer ahead of the youngster.

“We shouldn’t be surprised because that is the trend. We shouldn’t be surprised and every single time we sit here and say that we are surprised. To me it was an absolute no-brainer. Hetmyer had to go in ahead of Dhruv Jurel, regardless of whether he played very nicely. He would have still played nice when he got his opportunity. But they needed to negate the two left-arm spinners, right at the outset. That was the hole, Sunrisers had in their attack and they needed to negate that. They should have sent Hetmyer in and said just play your game. Take it down in your zone, let’s get ahead in this game, do not allow these left-arm spinners to take control of the game. Yes, people will see we end up getting out to left-arm spin, but the game was nearly gone by then and that was a particularly good ball, a carrom ball as we mentioned. If we got ahead in the game, that would not have ever happened. It is a tactical blunder,” Moody said on ESPNcricinfo.

During a separate discussion, former India batter Virender Sehwag also slammed Samson for not sending Hetmyer ahead of Jurel, saying that the West Indies southpaw would’ve negated the left-arm spin factor against Shahbaz and Abhishek.

“I was surprised by their decision to bring in Hetmyer so late. They should have bought him earlier, because there were two left-arm spinners. The quicker a left-arm batters comes, it would have been better,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.