2 Reasons Why Suryakumar Yadav Has Failed In ODIs

In Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant’s absence, India are adamantly trying Suryakumar Yadav in the middle-order in the ODI side.

However, Suryakumar Yadav has failed to replicate his T20I success to  ODIs

Suryakumar Yadav

Suryakumar Yadav made his ODI debut in July 2021, in a 3-ODI series in Sri Lanka. And while he had success there – finishing as the second-highest scorer among Indian players with 124 runs in 3 innings, remaining unbeaten once, averaging 62, and, importantly, scoring at a strike rate of 122 – after that, the Mumbai batsman has found it tough to get going in the 50-over format for India.

His latest dismissal – lbw to a menacing Mitchell Starc, who shaped the ball into the batter’s pads – for a first-ball duck won’t bother the Indian team management much, because Starc was in a superb rhythm which accounted for Virat Kohli‘s wicket, as well as taking Shubman Gill’s outside edge but he was dropped but then dismissed by the same bowler.

But it is not to mask the fact that Suryakumar Yadav hasn’t been able to live up to the expectations of fans and management in the ODI format, despite being in a thunderous form in the shortest format.

Suryakumar Yadav
Suryakumar Yadav. Image-Twitter

Since August 2021, that is after his debut series in Sri Lanka, and that is in his last 18 ODIs, Suryakumar Yadav averages a below-standard 22 in 16 ODI knocks at a strike rate of 96 with just one half-century, against West Indies.

With a home World Cup around the corner, and India having already lost Rishabh Pant, Rohit and Dravid seems to want to desperately have Suryakumar Yadav in the middle-order as the aggressor, surrounded by the likes of Kohli, KL Rahul, and even Shreyas Iyer.

But there are reasons why Suryakumar Yadav hasn’t cracked the ODI code yet:

Batting in 50-over cricket requires different mindset than in 20-over

There’s a reason why many great 50-over batters disappointed in the 20-over format, and it’s the same reason why a few T20 giants weren’t successful 50-over batters: the tempo of the game, and the requirement of pacing your innings in totally different in the two formats.

Where Suryakumar Yadav is needed to play his free-flowing, risky shots and to start the innings with a flourish, that is just hit he ground running in T20 cricket – in ODIs, with two new balls operating, and with a lot more overs to play for the team than in T20Is but with the same number of wickets available, risk-averse, a bit traditional, a bit conservative cricket is needed at the start of an innings for a player batting in the top 5.

And perhaps Suryakumar Yadav, although being perhaps given the license to play his natural game by the management in ODIs, gets his mind tangled with what tempo he needs to bat at in ODIs, where bowlers get into their rhythm by bowling longer spells than the short one of two overs spell they do in T20Is.

Suryakumar Yadav been asked to bat in different positions by the team management

The team management has also not helped Suryakumar Yadav by putting him in at four different positions in the batting order in his short ODI career.

In his 19 ODI innings so far, he’s batted at number 3 once, at number 4 four times, at number 5 eleven times, and thrice at number 6 – he had most success at number 5, averaging 34 at it.

Suryakumar Yadav
Suryakumar Yadav. Image-AP

However, when the time for the crucial match came – in the first ODI vs Australia in Mumbai – India sent him at number 4 in just the 5th over of the match, feeding him to Mitchell Starc who was moving the ball at high pace under seam-friendly conditions, instead of sending KL Rahul, who is better equipped to face such bowling because of his experience as an opener.

India under Rohit-Dravid have poorly, and disappointingly, been inflexible at times – be it any of the three formats – and this was one such instance when they needed to show more flexibility by pushing Suryakumar down and promoting the likes of KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya.

This is still the start of Suryakumar Yadav’s ODI career – one which India hopes takes success quickly as the World Cup approaches.

(Just a quick note: after 19 ODI innings, AB de Villiers averaged only 21; so, though SKY doesn’t have as much time left as ABD had at that stage of his ODI career, the coming matches and months are really crucial for Suryakumar Yadav and India’s ODI plans.)