Suryakumar Yadav has been brilliant in the T20 World Cup 2026 by aggregating 164 runs so far but his strike rate of 136.13 tells a different story. Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar has also criticised Suryakumar’s excessively cautious batting approach and wants the India captain to play his natural game in the Super Eight stage.
Manjrekar praised Suryakumar’s innings of 84 against USA in the tournament opener where India were reduced to 77 for 6 batting first. Suryakumar curbed his natural instinct to rescue India from that batting collapse. With the top-order not firing as expected, Suryakumar, Tilak Varma and the batters following them are forced to bat “conservatively”.
“There is something that I am seeing in Suryakumar Yadav which I’m not liking too much. 77-6, India against USA, at the Wankhede, and Suryakumar Yadav had to change his game, which he did brilliantly. Just slowed down a little bit, and then exploded, and got a great score, player of the match, and everything,” Manjrekar said on his Instagram page.
“Since then, I think he is taking that a bit too far. Against Pakistan, where India lost a couple of wickets, he really pulled down the shutters quite a lot. Him and Tilak Varma are both playing slightly conservatively, and in the end, what happens is that people like Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, and Rinku Singh, are not really tapped into resources as much,” he also said.
Manjrekar wants Suryakumar to shake off that approach and get back to his natural style with India taking on South Africa in their first Super Eight clash in Ahmedabad on Sunday.
“In T20 cricket, that is a dangerous thing to do, where a senior player or captain feels like he has got to stay in, especially while batting first. When you are setting targets of 200 plus, if you have somebody in the top four who believes that he is the guy who has got to control the innings and make sure he is the one who will take India to a certain score, that is a very dangerous tactic. No batter must think like that. So, Surya must be careful about that,” Manjrekar said.
