Suryakumar Yadav makes bold declaration after India’s ODI failure against Sri Lanka: ‘Want to play all three format’

A new era in Indian cricket began with Gautam Gambhir taking over as the head coach of Men in Blue while Suryakumar Yadav replacing Rohit Sharma as the T20 captain of the team starting from Sri Lanka series. Although Surya is leading the team in shortest format of the game, he finds himself out of favour with the selectors in ODI and Test cricket but the batter has now made his intentions clear on donning the India colours in all 3 formats.

In a recent interaction with The Times of India, Surya while confirming his presence for the one-match in the Buchi Babu Invitational multi-day tournament stated that he would like to represent the country in all 3 formats of the game. 

Surya said, “I want to play for India in all the three formats. Playing in Buchi Babu will give me good practice for the red ball tournaments this season,”

Notably, India chief selector Ajit Agarkar had stated that the selection committee was looking at Surya as a T20 player at this point and he wasn’t event in the contention for a spot during the recently concluded ODI series against Sri Lanka. 

Speaking at a press briefing ahead of Sri Lanka series, Agarkar said, “No, we haven’t discussed Surya (for ODIs) at this point. Shreyas (Iyer) is back, KL (Rahul) is back. They have had great World Cups (ODI). Rishabh (Pant) is back as well. So there is some real quality through that middle order. So at this point Surya is a T20I player,”

Notably, Surya had last featured in the Indian ODI squad during the ODI World Cup last year but his unimpressive performances at the marquee event quickly saw him lose favour with the selectors. The 33-year-old batter has only played one Test match so far, where he made his debut against Australia at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in 2023.