'I know what to do' - Suryakumar vows to return to form ahead of T20 World Cup

For the first time since runs have dried up for Suryakumar Yadav in T20Is, India's captain in the shortest format has admitted that he is going through a lean patch. However, he was confident of overcoming it by the time the T20 World Cup starts on February 7.

For over a year now, Suryakumar has averaged a mere 12.84 and struck at only 117.87 with no half-centuries across 22 innings while batting at Nos. 3 and 4. He recently finished the five-match T20Is against South Africa at home with scores of 12, 5, 12 and 5, and now has only five games left to find some runs before India's T20 World Cup defence.

"Ye waala patch thoda lamba ho gaya (this patch has stretched a bit too long)," Suryakumar said with a smile at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai, where India announced their squad for the T20 World Cup. "I'm sure everyone has seen this in their respective careers. I will also go over it sometime. I know what to do, I know where things are going wrong. I've got some time to work on it. We have [the] New Zealand series coming up, and then the important T20 World Cup as well. You'll definitely see Surya is back."

Suryakumar's drought started soon after he took over as the T20I captain following India's T20 World Cup triumph under Rohit Sharma in the West Indies and USA in June 2024. When Suryakumar led the team to South Africa late last year, he crossed 5 just once in three attempts. When India hosted England early this year, he bagged two ducks and had a top score of 14 in five innings. Seven months later, Suryakumar scored an unbeaten 47 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup before his form tapered off again, and at the end of the tournament, he insisted he was "not out of form, but out of runs".

Suryakumar then scored at least 20 three times in four innings in Australia, and struck at over 160 in each of those. But the runs deserted him again once he returned home for the South Africa T20Is, which he finished with an average of 8.50. Again he was asked during the series about his form, and again he said he was out of runs and not out of form.

Suryakumar had skyrocketed to the top of the ICC T20I rankings among batters not long before that with his jaw-dropping 360-degree style of batting and consistency. He has the joint-second-most Player-of-the-Series awards in the format behind Virat Kohli, he scored an India record 1164 T20I runs in 2022 at an average of 46.56 while striking at 187.43 in 31 innings, and he's only one century away from equalling Rohit Sharma and Glenn Maxwell for the most hundreds (five) in T20Is.

When asked if he watches old videos of his batting to try and regain his rhythm, Suryakumar said: "I've been watching it for the past three months (laughs). Obviously, you go back to seeing your old videos where you batted really well, and you delivered for India. And you try to carry the same thing. But yeah, I've been trying; I've been batting beautifully in the nets. The same thing… this is a small hurdle. It's invisible - I can't see it - but I'll overcome it, I'm sure."

When India's selection panel led by Ajit Agarkar assembled in Mumbai on Saturday noon to pick the T20 World Cup squad, they knew the captain as well as the vice-captain Shubman Gill had been searching for runs in the format in recent times. Gill had gone 18 innings without a half-century in T20Is, and had scores of 28, 0 and 4 against South Africa. While the selectors backed Suryakumar to "hopefully" regain his form by the time the T20 World Cup arrives, they left out Gill from the squad of 15.

"With his (Suryakumar's) form, look, over the last few years he has been the No. 1 T20 batter in the world," Agarkar said. "So we know what he brings to the table. He knows what he needs to do. And hopefully, come the World Cup, he is again the No. 1 batter in the world."