Suryakumar Yadav He is reportedly set to be removed as India's T20I captain despite leading the team to the T20 World Cup title earlier this year. While his captaincy skills have been praised by fans and experts, his batting performances have been worryingly low.
However, Virat Kohli's former Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) teammate Mohammad Kaif came out in support of Suryakumar, pointing out that the right-handed batsman had a great campaign in IPL 2025 and has performed brilliantly during his career in the shortest format. Kaif said that as a T20 batsman, Suryakumar is equal to Kohli.
The former India batsman said that although Kohli has performed much better than Suryakumar in the T20 World Cup, there will not be much difference if their overall T20 careers are compared.
Kaif said on his YouTube channel, “Suryakumar Yadav is not a new batsman. He is a proven player. In the last IPL, he scored 700 runs. Not being in form is one thing. Even Kohli was out of form for two years, but there was confidence that once he finds his rhythm, he will score runs again.”
He said, “In T20, Suryakumar is at par with Kohli, not less. Don't compare in the World Cup. I agree that he has not scored runs in the World Cup, but he is not a light player. Even a player like Kohli had bad times, but he got support. Every player has bad times. You could have dropped him after one or two series, then I would have had no problem. At least give some respect to the winning captain.”
Kaif said that the time to snatch the responsibility of captaincy from Suryakumar is wrong. He said that the Mumbai Indians batsman could have been given one more series and if he failed to return to form, he could have been dropped. The cricketer-turned-expert feels that the new captain will feel the pressure as he will know that his predecessor was dropped despite leading the team to the World Cup title.
He said, “I think the timing is wrong. You can remove Surya, but you should have given him at least one more series. If he did not score there, then you can say that now we are moving on. We gave you a chance, but you could not get back in form and now we are looking at other players. But now whoever becomes the captain will have different pressure on him that if the same happens to Surya after winning, what can happen to me? He should get some more chances. And then you can delete it.”
Get every cricket update! Follow us: :
Leave a Reply