‘Don’t want to be captain, I want to be leader’: Suryakumar Yadav

Suryakumar Yadav’s heart is beating with joy watching his teammates care for each other, as he starts his journey to become a leader of men rather than a mere captain of a cricket team.

In his first series as full-time T20I captain, Suryakumar won the ‘Player of The Series’ award after two brilliant knocks in the first two games, but getting two wickets with his off-breaks in a thrilling Super Over win was an icing on the cake.

“Like I said before the series, I don’t want to be the captain, I want to be the leader,” Suryakumar said at the post-match presentation ceremony.

He couldn’t stop praising his teammates, who showed a lot of heart in defending a modest 137.

“The amount of skill they have, self-confidence, it makes my job easy. The positivity, the care for each other is unbelievable. After the last game, I told few boys will be rested and they were ready to sit out.

They have made my job easy. I have little pressure when I bat,” he said.

The Indian skipper said that just like one enjoys tall scores of 220 or 230, one should also start enjoying low-scoring games which resembles bringing a balance in lives.

“More than the last over, I feel when we were around 30/4 and 48 for 5, how the boys showed character, 140 was a par score on that track. I told, if we put our heart in, we could pull it off.”

Sri Lanka skipper Charith Asalanka didn’t have an answer as to what went wrong with the middle-order in all three games.

“Definitely, really disappointed, especially the middle-order and lower-middle order. Very bad shot selection. The thinking was spinners were bowling and that’s why Wanindu Hasaranga came up the order and we gave him the license to hit one or two boundaries,” Asalanka said.

“I think especially we played some wrong shots and when the ball gets old, the shot selection has to be spot on. We can’t give excuses and we have to do more than this.

“I want to see good batting performance in ODIs and I think the boys will do better,” the dejected Lankan skipper added.