Durban, Dec 10 (UNI) Suryakumar Yadav, India’s T20I skipper for the South Africa series, is bullish about his team’s chances in the upcoming three-match series against the Proteas starting on Sunday.
Suryakumar is certain that young team would adapt seamlessly to the hard and bouncy wickets in South Africa and praised the team’s effort to win the T20I series against Australia before heading to the Rainbow Nation.
“I think the key to success on such wickets will be to be yourself,” Suryakumar said in the pre-series press conference.
“The boys have prepared well. We are coming from a good T20I series win and have played on all fast tracks and all batters have played on such wickets. They will enjoy playing here in South Africa,” he said.
Carrying on from what he said during the Australia series, Suryakumar expressed that he wanted the team to maintain the “fearless” approach that brought them success in the home series, an ICC report said.
“The players put their hands up against Australia and came up with fearless cricket, and we need to play the same against South Africa,” he said.
“I just told them to do exactly what they do in franchise cricket,” Suryakumar said.
Stressing that he has enjoyed captaincy so far, Suryakumar underlined that it was an important series for India given that they only played six more T20Is before the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup next year.
But the skipper also brushed aside concerns that the lack of matches would affect India’s preparations for the global event.
“I feel there are limited T20s going forward, before the T20 World Cup, but then we play 14 league games in the IPL as well,” Suryakumar said.
“And players who have been playing in these T20 internationals… they’ve played a lot of games, and they have a lot of experience under their belt. So, we don’t think there will be an issue or any problem in selecting the squad because everyone knows their roles really well and responsibilities really well,” he said.
The skipper didn’t divulge details about India’s possible combination for the series opener on Sunday, but stated that the team knew who would be opening the innings in Durban.
