Suryakumar Yadav made his international debut last year but he didn’t take much time to make a big mark as he is currently the number 1 ranked T20I player in the ICC batting charts. He received a late call-up to the Indian team despite scoring consistently well in the domestic circuit and the Indian Premier League. The Mumbaikar kept working on his batting technique to get ready for international cricket.
The emergence of Surya in the last year has been one of the most talked about things in international cricket. And now he has set the World Cup on fire with 225 runs from five games, including three fifties at a staggering strike rate of 193.97.
T20 World Cup 2022: Full Coverage | Schedule | Results | Points Table | Gallery
Speaking exclusively with renowned journalist G Krishnan for News18 Cricketnext, former Mumbai batter and current Parsee Gymkhana coach Vinayak Mane talked about how Suryakumar started developing his game about six years ago as he worked on hitting straight to widen his range of shots.
“He always played well square of the wicket and behind the wicket. He always had that, ability to do that at will, since the days I’m watching him. But as time went by, he realized the importance of hitting the straight field as well. And I think the development has happened say six years back maybe. He started hitting straight field more in domestic cricket. Obviously, he tried it in nets and then he started doing it and then he started hitting extra cover more and long off. And I think now he’s able to confuse the bowlers more since he can hit behind the wicket also and developed hitting the straight field as well. I think that adds a lot of technical advantage,” Mane said.
Suryakumar Yadav is one of the few players who has the ability to score 360-degree which earlier legendary South Africa batter AB de Villiers mastered.
Recently, Surya became also the second batsman ever to score 1000 T20I runs in a calendar year after Mohammad Rizwan who achieved the feat last year.
Mane has known Surya for a very long time and he shared details of how coincidentally both of them were associated with the same teams in past.
“I know Surya since his under 19 days. I used to play for Bharat Petroleum for many years and worked for them. And then when it all started, we started recruiting players on scholarship and Surya was one of the players we took in the first batches So we have been watching him since then. Played alongside him quite a bit of cricket for BPCL. Later on, I moved to Parsee Gymkhana and coincidentally he also joined us after a couple of years. And yeah, I’ve seen him quiet for a long now, always been a very smart operator,” he added.
Get the latest Cricket News, Schedule and Cricket Live Scores here