Suryakumar Yadav was the main talking point when India’s squad for the Sri Lanka Tour was announced. The star batter was named the captain ahead of India’s T20 World Cup vice-captain Hardik Pandya. BCCI chief selector Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir on Monday elaborated on the plan behind making Yadav the skipper of the T20I team, and not Pandya. “You (would) want a captain that’s going to be more likely to play all the games. Why Surya was made captain? Because he is one of the deserving candidates. The one we know has been around the dressing room over the last one year, you get feedback from the dressing room a lot.He has got a good cricketing brain and he is still one of the best T20 batters in the world,” Agarkar elaborated before the team’s departure for Sri Lanka.
He also made it clear that Yadav is currently being considered for only the shortest format.
“No we haven’t discussed Surya at this point in ODIs. Shreyas (Iyer) is back, KL (Rahul) is back, they’ve had a great (ODI) World Cup, Rishabh (Pant) is back as well so there is some real quality through that middle order. At this point, Surya is a T20I player,” said BCCI chief selector Agarkar.
While Yadav is among the top-ranked T20I batters, his form in ODIs has never been consistent. In 37 matches, he scored 773 runs at an average of 25.76. He once got out for three straight ducks in ODIs against Australia.
While the selection of Suryakumar as captain of the T20I team seems to be a course correction by the selection committee led by Agarkar, the former India pacer also said they have not closed the door on anyone and players that do well in the domestic circuit can back in their previous roles.
Asked about players like Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma and Ruturaj Gaikwad who have been dropped for the Sri Lanka tour despite being part of the previous series, Agarkar said the players picked ahead of them too deserved their place in the squad.
“I mean, every player who’s left out feels hard done by. Our challenge is to pick only 15 to try and get the best balance. So someone’s likely to miss out sometimes. They’ve had some recent performances in recent times, but you got to see who’s picked ahead of them. I mean, are those guys not deserving of their place?
“If that’s the thing, then there are things to discuss. But at this stage, I mean, we had an opportunity to give some of those guys, you know, a go in the Zimbabwe series, which was good. So we have enough depth. If tomorrow there’s loss of form from the players that are playing or there are injuries it’s tough,” said Agarkar.
With IANS inputs
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