“This sport is not like table tennis or lawn tennis” - Suryakumar Yadav opens up on his poor T20I form

Indian T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav has sounded confident of scoring runs and getting back to his old form in the upcoming five-match T20I series against New Zealand, starting on Wednesday, January 21, in Nagpur.

Speaking in the pre-series press conference, Surya asserted that he doesn’t want to tweak things and change his identity ahead of the much-anticipated ICC T20 World Cup 2026 campaign, which is scheduled to start on February 7.

Notably, Suryakumar couldn’t register a single half-century in the last 19 T20I innings, managing to score only 218 runs at an average of 13.62 and the highest score of an unbeaten 47-run knock.

"Yes, I’ve been batting really well, and the runs will definitely come. But at the same time, I don’t want to do things differently. I don’t want to change my identity — the things that have given me success over the past three or four years," Suryakumar Yadav said at the pre-series press conference.

"I want to bat the same way. If performance comes, I’ll take it. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back to the drawing board, practice again, work hard and come back stronger. If this were an individual sport like table tennis or lawn tennis, I would think a lot more. But this is a team sport," he added.

"My first responsibility is how the team is doing. If the team is doing well and winning, I’m happy. If my performance comes along with that, great. If not, that’s okay — sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t," he concluded.

India will take on New Zealand in the first T20I on Wednesday, January 21, in Nagpur. Later, they will head to Raipur for the second T20I on Friday, January 23. The next three games will be played in Guwahati, Visakhapatnam, and Thiruvananthapuram, respectively.

India squad for T20I series vs NZ: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Shreyas Iyer (first three T20Is), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel (vc), Rinku Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ishan Kishan (wk), Ravi Bishnoi.

Stay updated with the latest cricket news, match insights, and exclusive updates at BetBarter and download the BetBarter app to start betting today!