India’s medium pacer Sandeep Sharma reckons it would be senseless to give Shreyas Iyer T20I captaincy ahead of Suryakumar Yadav. SKY is currently leading India in the shortest format of the game, and Sharma said that leadership success in the IPL should take a backseat when the selectors and board are considering India’s T20I captaincy.
SKY has done a fine job with the T20I team whereas Shreyas Iyer could not even get a place in the Asia Cup squad. Iyer has an impressive record in IPL as a leader, taking the Kolkata Knight Riders to glory in IPL 2024. Furthermore, Iyer took Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings to the IPL finals of 2020 and 2025 seasons, respectively.
“See, this debate that he (Iyer) as a captain took his team to the finals is senseless,” Sandeep was quoted as saying by Crictracker. “Surya is not doing the captaincy of any franchise. So that is not the criteria to be the captain of the Indian side. And for the last three years, Rohit was not doing the captaincy of any franchise. But still, he was the captain of the T20 Indian team and one-day side is still the same captain. And he was the captain of all three formats of Tests. So that is not the criteria that what you do in IPL.”
Sharma, who is known for his impressive death bowling, pointed out that there is a lot of difference while picking a captain for an IPL team and the national team.
“IPL is totally different. It is a domestic league. Like that, BCCI has its own domestic league, right? And when you are picking an international team, there you are picking 15 people. So you pick a captain who will manage 15 people better there. Here in IPL, you have a lot of domestic players, a lot of young players. Some of them come from overseas. But here you are picking someone who will manage 15 people better here,” Sandeep, who has represented three different IPL teams during his career so far, said.
“So this debate, I feel, is senseless that what is he (Iyer) doing in IPL. These two teams are totally different teams. The Indian team is a totally different team. The IPL team is a totally different team. So I feel people need to learn and people need to understand more about this thing before commenting,” he added.
India will begin their Asia Cup campaign against the UAE on September 10.
