Suryakumar Yadav, the captain of the World Cup-winning team, says he longs to play Test cricket and finds ODI unappealing, but in the end, T20 is his specialty since “usmey apna haath set ho gaya hai”.
Suryakumar occasionally fell into endearing Mumbaiya Hindi during an exclusive podcast interview with PTI. One such instance is the phrase “haath set ho gaya hai,” which has no good English counterpart. He intended to convey, roughly translated, that he is now proficient in the shortest cricket format and feels at ease playing it.
Suryakumar talked about his disappointment at not playing Test cricket during the hour-long chat. He was certainly on cloud nine after leading India to an incredibly successful World Cup campaign.
He was reminded that he had participated in one Test match against Australia. “One inning!” he corrected the interviewer, grinning as well.
“…what is written in your life, you get that only. I started with red-ball cricket itself, played Ranji Trophy for 10-12 years. I played a lot of red-ball cricket in Bombay (erstwhile Mumbai) because if you grow up in Bombay, you start with red ball itself, so everything is around red ball,” he said.
“But gradually, when we started playing white-ball cricket, the inclination shifted a bit towards that. And after that, I came to this format (T20). I also tried a lot in One-Day cricket to play well in it, but nothing happened there,” he said.
“T20 mein jaisa chal raha tha, usme apna haath set ho gaya hai, aisa bol sakte hain” (The way T20 was working out for me, I had become good at it, you can say that),” he said.
Would he want to play Test cricket if given the chance? He answered without hesitation: “I would love to, because, as I mentioned, I played red-ball cricket from 2010-11 to 2020. So, 10 years is a long time to play red ball, and I was in love with that format. But yeah, obviously, given an opportunity, who wouldn’t want to play Test?” he said.
Even yet, it is nearly impossible for Suryakumar to join the Test team at the age of 35. His lone Test match was against Australia in Nagpur in 2023, where he scored 8 runs in a single inning.
He made an appearance against Australia in the ODI World Cup final that year, scoring 18 runs off of 28 balls. Suryakumar hasn’t competed in that format since India’s defeat in the final.
When asked if ODIs had a future, Suryakumar remained tactful, giving the format its due without being overly contemptuous, considering that T20 gives spectators tremendous excitement in a short amount of time while Test gives them traditional satisfaction. The format’s declining frequency of bilaterals appears to be a sign that ODIs may soon become outdated.
“I feel that as much as I have experienced ODI cricket closely and I have seen it, it is a format where you have to bat in three different ways. Sometimes if you go in early, if wickets fall quickly, then you have to bat like Test cricket.
“Then you have to bat with a good strike rate like a One-Day and then later at the end of the innings, you have to bat like (you do in) T20 format. So, that is one format that I never understood. I tried my best to play it. But then it’s a challenging format,” he said.
Former India spinner Ravichandran Ashwin feels that ODIs are dying a “slow death,” Wasim Akram of Pakistan once suggested that the ICC do away with them completely, and Kevin Pietersen of England believes that 50-over cricket is most in danger in the ever-expanding T20 cosmos.
Suryakumar also remembers the feelings evoked by the format at the World Cup in 2023.
“…when I was with the team for the 2023 ODI World Cup and I played, then that vibe, the whole atmosphere of that format, the build-up going into the final. That was completely different than what we played in 2026 and 2024 T20 World Cup.
“So, it’s charm is different, ODI cricket also has a different charm, T20 has a different one,” he explained.
