The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), earlier this week, picked Suryakumar Yadav as the new captain of the T20I team, with the 2026 T20 World Cup in mind. The top-ranked T20I batter pipped Hardik Pandya in the race to become Rohit Sharma’s successor after the latter announced his retirement from the format post India’s T20 World Cup win last month in Barbados.
It was reportedly a joint decision made by chief selector, Ajit Agarkar and Gautam Gambhir, the newly appointed head coach of the Indian men’s team. Hardik, who was expected to assume the leadership position after serving as the vice-captain of the T20 World Cup-winning team last month, was informed about the decision before BCCI made it official with the squad announcement for the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka.
Various media outlets also reported that fellow members of the Indian team trusted Suryakumar more, especially after his stint in South Africa last December, ahead of Hardik for the T20I captaincy duty. However, a fresh report in PTI indicated that Agarkar himself wasn’t entirely convinced that the all-rounder was tactically as sound as one expects an international skipper to be.
Hardik does require a bit of handholding, which he got from former India cricketer Ashish Nehra during his two years at Gujarat Titans between 2022 and 2023, where the franchise reached both the finals in IPL and lifted the trophy on their debut season. However, such was not offered by South Africa great and Mumbai Indians head coach, Mark Boucher, who however backed Hardik to the tilt even amid the brutal crowd reaction at each of venues and media reports speculating a a rift in the MI dressing room.
Besides his captaincy stints at IPL, Hardik also led India in 16 T20Is and three ODIs during Rohit’s absence.
Suryakumar’s first assignment as the captain of the Indian side will be the T20I series against Sri Lanka on July 27, 28 and 30. All the matches will be played in Pallekele.
The India batter, who was part of the 2023 World Cup team, however, did not make the ODI squad for the series against Sri Lanka, which will be played between August 3 and 7 in Colombo. Hardik, on the other hand, opted out of this series owing to personal reasons.