The aura around Suryakumar Yadav has faded somewhat. The maverick batsman who held the number one spot in the men’s ICC T20I batting rankings on multiple occasions averages just 6.75 from his previous eight innings, and the not so veiled appointment of Shubman Gill as India’s vice-captain for the tournament – when he has not played a T20I since July 2024 – indicates that the BCCI are potentially looking at a younger, all-format leader post next year’s T20 World Cup.
As leader of India’s T20I squad, SKY’s record is excellent. Under him, the Indian team has won 18 off 22 matches. This run of success spans series victories over Australia, South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and a tied 1-1 series against South Africa. And, most importantly, under SKY post the retirement of Rohit Sharma in mid-2024, India have adopted a braver, more aggressive, and riskier form of T20 cricket that has reaped rewards.
In these matches, as a batsman, Suryakumar averages 26.57 but with a strike-rate of 163.15 and has one century and four fifties.
The problem is, while India have been winning, Suryakumar’s returns have diminished. His last half-century was eight innings ago – when he made 75 off 35 balls against Bangladesh in October 2024 – and since then his scores read 21, 4, 1, 0, 12, 14, 0 and 2.
Now, it can be argued that his failures cannot be a problem if the team has won six of those eight T20Is in which SKY the batsman has failed. Clearly the captain’s lack of runs has not impacted the team as badly as it could have. But for a cricketer who will turn 35 during the Asia Cup, and with Gill the current flavour of Indian cricket – Test captain, ODI captain in waiting – further failure with the bat could have negative consequences.
Indian cricket is, after all, fickle by nature. Clearly, Suryakumar has the captaincy job until the end of 2026 T20 World Cup, but if he does not contribute with the bat, irrespective of how India fares next year, it could be the end of his captaincy. And when you’re 35 and not leading the team, staying in the side, given the amount of younger talent India possess, might prove next to impossible.
Rohit changed his approach in ODIs and subsequently T20I cricket to make himself more valuable to the Indian team and signed off last year with as a T20 World Cup winner having contributed 257 runs with a strike-rate of 156.70 for the undefeated champions.
Suryakumar was once the benchmark for T20I batting, and this was not too long ago. And if you look at his form in IPL 2025, it shows a different batsman. In 16 innings, he amassed 717 runs – the second most in the tournament – at an average of 65.18 and a strike-rate of 167.91. That stands as the most for any Mumbai Indians player in a single season of the IPL.
But what compounds the worry around SKY today is that he has not batted in any sort of competitive match since June, when he turned out for Triumph Knights Mumbai North East in the Mumbai T20 League and managed 122 runs in four innings. In July, he flew to Germany for hernia surgery and only resumed batting in the nets this month.
The Asia Cup will be SKY’s first multi-team tournament as captain of India, and it marks the countdown to India’s T20 World Cup at home in 2026. For SKY, hitting the ground running as captain and batsman is imperative. But for the first time in his stellar T20I career with India, you get the feeling that producing the goods with the bat might be slightly more critical, no matter the success that the team has had under SKY.
