Suryakumar won India a World Cup, lost everything, and is starting again at 15
India's World Cup-winning captain says the months since he was dropped have been 'very difficult'. His answer is the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, a Mumbai cap, and the mindset of a teenager.
From the trophy to the outside, in one IPL
In March, Suryakumar Yadav lifted India's second straight T20 World Cup, at home. By India's next assignment after the IPL, he was not the captain and not in the side. Shreyas Iyer had the job.
That is not a slow fade. That is a trapdoor.
On Tuesday, at an MCA event in Mumbai, Suryakumar finally said out loud what everyone assumed. It has been hard. And unusually for an Indian cricketer talking about selection, he did not dress it up.
Post the T20 World Cup, it has been a little difficult. I don't want to run away from the fact… if you're not honest with yourself, it's very difficult to lead a happy life. To be very honest, it has been very difficult.Suryakumar Yadav, via ESPNcricinfo
Honesty is the headline here
The standard script for a dropped star is "the selectors know best, I'm focusing on my game". Suryakumar went the other way: he said it hurt, then said why he is okay now.
The reason was a baby girl, born in May, during the IPL. "The focus shifted completely towards her," he said, and the months since have been "very beautiful".
That is a human answer, not a PR one. It also tells you where his head was during an IPL in which Mumbai Indians finished second from the bottom. Hard to blame a man for having a better reason to smile than the points table.
What India moved on from
| T20I matches | 113 |
| T20I runs | 3272 |
| T20I average | 36.35 |
| T20I strike rate | 162.94 |
| T20I hundreds / fifties | 4 / 25 |
| T20I highest score | 117 |
| All T20s: runs at strike rate | 9729 at 152.58 |
| Age | 36 |
Career numbers via ESPNcricinfo.
The numbers say he was not done
A strike rate near 163 across 113 T20Is is not the profile of a player who ran out of road. Four T20I hundreds is elite company for a middle-order batter. The selectors' call was about age and the next cycle, not about output.
And that is fair enough. At 36, he will be 37 by the next World Cup window. India have a deep T20 pool and a new captain to build around. But "fair" and "painless" are different things, and Suryakumar is the first one to admit it.
The awkward detail: he has not played top-flight cricket since the IPL. Mumbai T20 League in June, club games in Mumbai, and he was left out of Mumbai's Ranji Trophy squad for lack of red-ball preparation. This from a batter with 5758 first-class runs at 42.33 and a top score of 200.
You need to bring back that love and passion for the game, what you had when you were a 15-year-old kid who wanted to represent Mumbai in age-group cricket.Suryakumar Yadav, recalling his wife's advice, via ESPNcricinfo
The reset: Mumbai, Kolkata, November 14
He said the first two months after the IPL were difficult. Then came the talk at home and the decision to go back to the start: training like he did 10 to 15 years ago, chasing the same thing he chased as a kid.
The vehicle is the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, which starts on November 14. Suryakumar is Mumbai's captain, and Mumbai play all their games in Kolkata. The squad has India names around him: Shivam Dube, Shardul Thakur, Sarfaraz Khan and Tushar Deshpande.
His stated goal is simple and very Mumbai: "to win the championship for Mumbai."
CricIntel's take
Don't read this as a comeback campaign for the India captaincy. Read it as a player choosing to enjoy cricket again before deciding what is next. That is a smarter play than sulking in public or forcing a recall narrative.
But the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy is also the loudest stage in Indian domestic T20 right before an IPL season. A World Cup-winning captain smashing it at 160-plus for Mumbai in Kolkata is the kind of story selectors find very hard to ignore.
India moved on from Suryakumar. Suryakumar has just said, honestly, that it took him a while to move on from India. Watch the first week in Kolkata. If the love is back, the runs usually follow.
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