Suryakumar Yadav eyes India return after 21-ball 60 against Hyderabad in SMAT 2026

Former Indian T20I captain and a two-time World Cup winner, Suryakumar Yadav has not given up on his chances of making a comeback to the national side. Suryakumar, fondly known as SKY, was named the Mumbai captain for the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) and made headlines with his blistering performance straight away. Against Hyderabad in Mumbai’s opener, SKY smashed a 21-ball 60, including five sixes and six fours, to steer his team to a seven-wicket win.

Playing his first game since IPL 2026 concluded in May, the former top-ranked T20I batter showed his class in a successful run chase, bringing back memories of the past. Opening up on his exclusion from the T20I side despite leading the Men in Blue to their first T20 World Cup triumph on home soil in March 2026, Suryakumar said it still hurts, but his intent is clear: to make a comeback to the Indian T20I team.

"After winning the [T20] World Cup, you naturally think that you will play in India's next series after the IPL," Suryakumar said after the game in Kolkata. "It's not easy to win an ICC event, especially at home, which nobody has done in the past. It felt great to win that tournament. But the selectors must have thought of something to decide [to change captaincy]. But I was definitely disappointed. If you're not sad after such things, how will you turn it into passion? The same hunger that I had to play for India is back now. I want to play for the country again, so I have to knock down the [selectors'] door."

"My intent is clear - to make a comeback," he said. "When you have that target in mind to play for India, you work in one direction and bat in a disciplined way. I have worked on a lot of things, from my mental game to the skills."

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SKY batted at a strike rate of 285.71, and his new high-risk, high-reward approach continues to yield results for him. Explaining how quickly the T20 format is changing, and with that, his approach, SKY said, "It's not about giving a statement."

"You can see how the T20 game is changing. Till 2024, the game was slightly different and then from 2024 to 2026 we played a different brand of cricket where 190-220 was being scored and sometimes 250 as well. But now, in every game, you see 225, 230 and 240 being scored. The openers give a great start in the powerplay; like today, we scored 75-80 [79] runs in the first six overs. But after that also you need to score at a similar pace from the seventh to the 15th overs, like we saw in the Indian team. If we have to reach scores like 250-260, then I'm part of that strategy.

"Playing the high-risk, high-reward game has been my approach in the middle overs, but now I'm trying to take even more risk to hit more fours and sixes. Now this format is all about fours and sixes. There are very few games where a team is 50 for 4 or 60 for 5; otherwise, it's always a 200-225 kind of game. So, my attempt is to dominate as much as I can in the middle overs against spinners and fast bowlers,” he continued.