'Injured' Suryakumar Yadav scores unbeaten 182

Suryakumar Yadav, the batsman who was omitted from the Mumbai Indians squad for the Champions League T20 on account of injury, has scored an unbeaten 182 in an under-22 tournament in Mumbai on Thursday. Yadav's omission from the MI squad on September 22 had left them with seven Indian players, which prompted their request for an additional overseas player for the tournament and resulted in theirs being the only team allowed to field five foreign players in the final XI.

Yadav was captaining the Chandrakant Pandit XI against Dilip Vengsarkar XI in a three-day match of the Shalini Bhalekar Trophy; on Wednesday he had fielded the entire day and bowled 6.3 overs as well, according to Hindustan Times. The paper also reported that he'd had surgery on an injured finger, which was the reason for his being withdrawn from the Mumbai Indians squad.

"As soon as we heard he was available, we picked him for this tournament," Yadav's team coach Deepak Patil told ESPNcricinfo. "We wouldn't play an unfit player. Our selectors had assessed and approved his fitness, and picked him to play."

The current event is aimed at selecting the Mumbai squad for the CK Nayudu Trophy, the national Under-22 tournament. Yadav is seen as a sure-shot pick and a possible captain.

He was one of six Indian players to be ruled out of MI's CLT20 campaign, along with Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma, Munaf Patel, Ali Murtaza and Dhawal Kulkarni.

In addition to those six injured players, the CLT20 technical committee had announced that they had also received medical reports ruling out two more Mumbai players - Aditya Tare and Pawan Suyal - from the tournament. That left eight out of Mumbai's 23 contracted players unavailable for selection. It also meant the final 14-member squad had an equal number of Indian and overseas players, without a buffer to handle any potential injury to an Indian player. The organisers then allowed Mumbai to field five overseas cricketers in their playing XI, though other other IPL sides continued to be limited to four.

The MI media manager refused to comment on the issue.