Suryakumar Yadav believes that teams need to be flexible to master the 20-over format of cricket and is fine with the floating position in India’s batting order.
Yadav smashed an unbeaten 68 off 26 balls as India beat Hong Kong by 40 runs to register their second successive win in the Super Four stage of the Asia Cup on Wednesday.
At a slow pace where the other batsmen couldn’t really let loose, Yadav helped India recover from a slow start, hitting six sixes in an incendiary innings at No.
It was amazing of his innings that Virat Kohli got full time to capitalize on his innings. Cricket pundits see merit in promoting the 31-year-old ahead of Virat Kohli, who scored an unbeaten 59, but Yadav said he was not fussy about his place in the order.
“I’m really ready to bat at any number,” said Player of the Match Yadav, who is third in the official rankings for Twenty20 batsmen.
“Actually I have told the coach and the captain – ‘play me anywhere, just let me play’,” he told reporters with a smile.
With the Twenty20 World Cup in mind starting next month in Australia, India are constantly tweaking their batting order to identify a winning combination.
“We are trying a lot of things and experimenting a lot, and it’s better to try those things in matches like these than in the nets,” Yadav said.
The experiment involved the idea of batting first and Yadav said the players had a better idea of how to build an innings and set a winning target.
“What would be an ideal total, what kind of pace do we need to set in the middle overs, how to finish it… everything was crystal clear.
“If I couldn’t do that, Rishabh (Pant), Dinesh Karthik or (Ravindra) Jadeja would have done it. We have enough firepower in that lineup.”