The days after Suryakumar Yadav debuted for India (2021) witnessed a huge rise in his career. The already made star had secured a permanent position in the national team. Not only that, he got his maiden T-20 World Cup call to Australia.
A lot of people started noticing Suryakumar Yadav after he came back to the Mumbai Indians camp back in the 2018 auction. The way he set fire in both the 2020 and 2021 editions of IPL, indeed opened his doors for the World Cup journey. However, the former Australian skipper Ricky Ponting has some other views.
Ricky Ponting, the then serving skipper of Mumbai Indian had closely observed Suryakumar Yadav in the later’s early days. Surya was there in the MI squad in the 201-14. He used to wait for his chances, surpassing the star-packed squad of Mumbai Indians. The next year, 2014 he shifted to Kolkata Knight Riders and scored, 608 runs in the 54 matches he played.
Suryakumar Yadav climbed back to the second spot
According to Ponting, that phase has been the biggest turning point in Surya’s career. It actually brought Suryakumar to the limelight and showed the world what he is capable of.
Suryakumar however returned to the MI squad in 2018. Thereafter scored 512 and 424 runs respectively in the next two years.
To ICC, Ponting told,
“When I was in Mumbai, he was an 18-19 year old kid, a young man. He was in our squad not quite getting a game. The year after I left, he was traded to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) where his career started to turn around. He got a bit of an opportunity in the middle order and then MI bought him back in the auction and has been a match-winning player for them for five or six seasons now, to the point that he is one of their retained players.”
On Wednesday, Suryakumar climbed back to his career-best second spot, in the newly released ICC T20I batting rankings. He suffered from a golden duck against Australia in the second T20I. However, he came back in form with an outstanding knock of 69 runs from 36 balls. It was the series decider match at Hyderabad where he came to two down for 30. Thereafter, Suryakumar switched on his attacking mode and made a century partnership with Virat Kohli. His innings, along with that of Virat Kohli, guided India towards the win.
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