Asia Cup: Time is ticking for Surya as the T20I captain

'The honour is mine, the journey is ours, here we go,' wrote captain Suryakumar Yadav on his X handle as the Men in Blue got down to business at the ICC Academy ground in Dubai on Saturday.

The Asia Cup, being played in T20 format this time, is the first multi-nation tournament where the maverick batter will be leading his country albeit with a question mark ticking over if his turn will come next.

Thrust with fulltime captaincy of the shortest format after Rohit Sharma walked away from it after India’s T20 World Cup win last year, India had been virtually unstoppable in the bilateral contests under the somewhat laidback, but astute captaincy of the man popularly known as SKY.

While a new-look team had been steamrolling one opposition after the other, including two strong rivals like South Africa (3-1 away) and England (4-1 at home), the Mr 360 degrees of Indian cricket had been struggling for runs.

 The numbers had been slightly disconcerting – only 258 runs from 14 innings at an average of 18.42 with just two fifties – hardly befitting his stature as a former world No.1 batter in T20Is and third highest run-getter for India in this format.

Then came IPL, where Surya silenced his doubters by amassing a total of 717 runs in 16 matches for Mumbai Indians proving to be one of the key factors behind their resurgence before the Mumbai Paltan faltered unexpectedly in the play-offs.

Now 34, Surya is someone who had to wait more than others for an induction in the international arena – and it’s almost ironical that he had been typecast as a white ball batter despite having done the hard yards in domestic red ball cricket for a decade before that. He did have his breaks in the ODIs well, being a part of the unstoppable team which finished runners up in the 2023 ICC World Cup at home, but he could not seize the opportunity and had been candid enough about it.

 This is where serious questions arise about the longevity of his international career – what with ageism being a contentious issue in Indian cricket at the moment.  The elevation of Shubman Gill as T20 vice-captain for the Dubai campaign, with no explanation as to why the previous incumbent Axar Patel was removed, has issued strong signals that the former is being groomed for all-format captaincy sooner than later.

The challenge now rests with Surya himself to let his bat do the talking – and the mighty Indian team to keep their date with the continental title to ensure he gets a shot at leading India in the T20 World Cup at home little over six months later.

Coming out of a sports hernia surgery which sidelined him since the IPL, Surya had completed his rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) but then, he could be a bit short on gametime.

The other issue, of course, could be his position in the batting order – now that Test captain Gill is also in the mix. The new T20 skipper had created a new, ultra aggressive dynamic with the trio of Abishek Sharma, Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma propelling their current strike rate to 173.08 and smashing 124 sixes, the most by any Test-playing nation’s top three.

Surya had volunteered to come down at number four and it remains to be seen how the team management juggles it around with Gill around - who had been a resounding success in IPL as an opener.

The Asia Cup, notwithstanding it’s fluctuating format (it varies between T20I and ODIs depending on the format of World Cup which follows), boasts of a history of four decades. The elite list of India captains who have won it in the past are: Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohammad Azharuddin, MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma – and it could be a moment of reckoning for Surya to get his name up in the roll of honour. 

And yes, it could give a pep to his candidature as India captain in what would be the first World T20 at home since the 2016 edition (the one in 2021 being shifted to the UAE for the pandemic)!