Suryakumar Yadav Matches Kohli’s Record in Half the Time: Few players can match Suryakumar Yadav’s skill in Twenty20 Internationals. Runs from Suryakumar’s bat flowed like water from an open faucet on a pitch that even the greatest white-ball players, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, found tough to play on. In India’s T20 World Cup Super Eight opening match against Afghanistan in Barbados, he did what he does best—he located the gaps in the field, got into good positions, and kept smashing the boundaries in the middle overs.
Coming in to bat at No.4 when India were 54/2 in 7 overs, Surya showed attacking intent to wrestle the initiative in India’s favour in the middle overs. He got to his half-century off 27 balls with a boundary off Fazhalhaq Farooqi before getting out in the next delivery.
Surya’s partnership of 70 runs with vice-captain Hardik Pandya (32 off 24) was the turning point in the game.
Due to his impressive batting performance, the right-hander was named Player of the Match. It was his fifteenth T20I Player of the Match award, which ties him for the most of any cricketer in the competition. Surya matched the world record held by Virat Kohli. To put his genius into perspective, though, Surya won 15 POTM titles in just 64 games, or an award every four games. In contrast, it took Kohli 113 games to reach 15 Player of the Month accolades.
Most T20Is POTM awards
- 15 Yadav Suryakumar
- 15 Virat Kohli
- 14 Virandeep Singh
- Sikandar Raza, 14
- 14 Mohammad Nabi
Additionally, this was the first World Cup where an Indian hitter has won Player of the Match. “I have no problem awarding a bowler Player of the Match. After India won the match by 47 runs, Surya told the announcers, “I don’t mind that it’s going to a hitter (from India) for the first time in this tournament.”
Suryakumar has been a complete beast in the game’s shortest format ever since he made his debut in 2021. In 61 innings, he has amassed 2253 runs at an average of 45.06 and the second-highest strike rate (168.51) of any player. For over a year now, he has held the top spot in the ICC T20I batting rankings.
Surya performed a great job with the sweep shot on Thursday, particularly against Rashid Khan. “I believe it requires a great deal of effort, as well as several procedures and routines. I know exactly what I want to do. All you really need to do, in my opinion, is play by your game plan. I clearly recall telling Hardik, “Let’s bat with the same intent,” when he first got to the bat. Let’s keep driving and pushing, and we’ll be thrilled to receive a score of 180 in the end,” Surya remarked.
