Follow UsHardik Pandya was the most obvious and to an extent rightful choice to lead the Indian team post T20 World Cup 2024. However, even after being the vice-captain of the side, he was not passed the baton from World Cup-winning captain Rohit Sharma. Rather, Suryakumar Yadav propped up out of nowhere and stole the thunder.
R Sridhar, former India fielding coach, feels that it might have hurt Pandya but is confident that the man who won the country the trophy with a great spell at the death alongside Jasprit Bumrah will come back stronger.
“I am sure Hardik will come back,” Sreedhar told Hindustan Times in an interview.
"He has just won you a World Cup. The last over obviously was fabulous from an Indian perspective. Hardik is somebody rare to find. We can take good care of him until he is playing and make sure he is available for the marquee series and all the big ICC tournaments.".
Sridhar, who was with the Indian team during Rahul Dravid and Ravi Shastri's coaching tenures, also spoke about the reason for not giving Pandya the captaincy and opting for someone like Surya.
“The very fact that Surya is someone who will be on the park for every match India is playing and not being bothered about workload monitoring is something which tilted the scales in his favour. Some of the matches in which he captained India when Rohit and Hardik were not available, gave confidence to the BCCI that he can do an excellent job.”
Having represented Hyderabad in 35 First-Class and 15 List-A matches, Sridhar also found another angle to Surya getting preferred over Pandya. “He [Surya] was vice-captain at KKR when [Gautam] Gambhir was the captain, and he's been good with Mumbai Indians when they need him. Falling back to his rapport with the other players, how they look up to him was also crucial,” reasoned the former fielding coach.
He added, “Surya is the number one T20I batter and the confidence, the ability to lead the team both on and off the field and the availability of the player for all matches alongside his cricketing acumen factored in.”
Surya won the first series as a full-time India captain 3-0 against Sri Lanka earlier in July to prove the selectors right.
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