India T20 captain Suryakumar Yadav has gone through a prolonged lean patch with a strike rate of 113 and an average of less than 15 in 2025, but he plans to stick with his successful batting strategy.
“I’ve been out of runs. But I can’t change my identity. I have decided to keep doing what I have been doing in the last three or four years so that has given me a lot of success. If the performance comes, I’ll take it, if it doesn’t, it’s back to the drawing board. I’m still batting in the nets the way I always have,” PTI quoted Suryakumar as saying in the pre-match press conference on Tuesday.
The captain responded very tactfully about how individual form doesn’t matter in the larger context of the team, even though the majority of queries were, obviously, about his form.
“Had I been playing a single (individual) sport like TT or tennis, I would have worried about my form. But this is team sport and my first responsibility is to ensure that my team does well.”
“If team wins, I am happy and if I can contribute in team’s success then fine and if not, doesn’t matter as it can happen. But I have to look at 14 other players also and there is no place for looking at personal milestones.”
The captain said he would like to be adaptable when asked if he had any chance of batting at No. 3, where he had great success.
“I have batted at both positions for India. My stats at No. 4 are slightly better although they are good at No. 3 also. But then we are flexible with that. We will see and if the situation demands that we have to send a right-hander (in case right hander Sanju Samson gets out), then, I will go in, otherwise Tilak (now injured) has been doing really well at number three,” he said.
According to Suryakumar, left-hander Ishan Kishan, who is a member of India’s T20 World Cup squad and a like-for-like substitute for an injured Tilak Varma, will start ahead of Shreyas Iyer in the series against New Zealand.
Due to an abdominal operation, Tilak, an automatic choice at number three, will miss the first three games, which begin in Nagpur on Wednesday. For the first three games, Iyer has returned to the national team.
But the captain made it very evident that Iyer is considered a No. 5.
“Ishan will bat at number 3 because he is a part of our T20 World Cup team and he was picked in the squad first so it’s our responsibility to give him a chance,” Suryakumar said.
“He hasn’t played for India for past one and half year and in the meantime consistently performed in domestic cricket,” the Indian skipper did not leave any room for guess work.
“Since he (Ishan) has been picked for World T20, he deserves to play ahead (of Shreyas). Had it been a question of batting slots Nos 4 or 5, it would have been a different question altogether. Unfortunately, Tilak isn’t there so Ishan is our best bet,” he added.
India and Sri Lanka will co-host the T20 World Cup, which begins on February 7.
