Suryakumar’s captaincy record was one of India’s best, and the World Cup final was his last match for India

The squad list went out on 6 June and Suryakumar Yadav’s name was not on it. Not as captain, not as a batter, not anywhere. He says he smiled.

“Whenever I have been in pressure situations or when things aren’t going in my favour, I’ve always smiled, relaxed,” he told Aakash Chopra on the former India batter’s YouTube channel. “I didn’t think this would happen in 2026. I was under the impression that I am preparing to take this team forward for another two years – Olympics, another T20 World Cup and then another challenge going forward.”

On the day itself he gave the gracious version. Speaking at the T20 Mumbai League, he called it a proud moment that three Mumbai captains in a row had gone on to lead India’s T20 side. Nearly three months later, sitting down for a long interview, he has given the other one.

The call came two days early

The selectors did not let him find out from a team sheet. Suryakumar says they rang him two or three days before the squad was announced, and the conversation did not take long.

“They said, ‘I think it’s time to move on. How’s it going? You saw what happened in IPL,’” he said. “I didn’t react because it’s not my forte. Whatever call was taken, the person must’ve felt it’s in the best interest of the team. You took the call, informed me, no harm done.”

No harm done is the diplomatic reading. The rest of the interview is not.

Six weeks of asking how

“For one-and-a-half months I kept thinking, how can this happen? How is it possible? We just won the World Cup,” he said. “Yes, IPL wasn’t as good as how I wanted. Friends and family consoled me that this is part of life. But once they leave, you are alone with your family. We were thinking, how is it possible?”

He has no argument with Shreyas Iyer, who replaced him and who he has played a great deal of cricket alongside in Mumbai. He called Iyer a good player, a good human being and a good captain, and said he did not resent the decision. What he cannot follow is the logic of making it.

“We didn’t lose a series for two years, won Asia Cup, T20 World Cup,” he said. “You want the same thing to go forward. When everything is going well, then why the change?”

A record that speaks for itself

The captaincy record is on his side. Suryakumar’s win rate as full-time T20I captain ranks among the best of any India skipper. He took the job on a full-time basis after Rohit Sharma stepped away from the format, and it ended with India beating New Zealand by 96 runs in the final at Ahmedabad on 8 March, the first successful defence of a men’s T20 World Cup by any team.

That night turned out to be his last appearance for India. Not his last as captain, his last full stop. India’s third-highest run-scorer in the format has not been picked since he lifted the trophy.

What the selectors were weighing

Ajit Agarkar has been open about the reasoning, and it comes down to two numbers and a date. Suryakumar made 242 runs in nine innings at a strike rate of 136.72 at the World Cup he won, then 270 in 13 IPL innings at an average of 20.76. And the next T20 World Cup is in October 2028, by which time he will be 38.

“With regards to Surya, obviously, it’s a tough one, having just won the World Cup, but as it happens, after most World Cups, we try and reassess what the best way forward is,” Agarkar said when the squad was named. “Partly his own form, but also looking at the next two-year cycle, or a little bit more than two years now till the next World Cup, we thought this was the best way forward.”

Read coldly, that is a defensible piece of planning. Read from where Suryakumar was standing, it arrived in the same season as a trophy, and the two-year cycle he was being written out of was the one he thought he was building.

India have not settled since

The handover has been rough. Iyer’s first match in charge was a 34-run defeat in Belfast on 26 June, Ireland’s first win over India in any format. England then took the five-match series 3-0, sealing it with a nine-wicket win at Bristol on 9 July that stretched India to six T20Is without a victory, their longest such run. A 3-0 sweep of Zimbabwe in Harare later that month stopped the slide.

Suryakumar is not treating any of this as a full stop. He is 35, still playing, and has left the door where the selectors can find it.

“I am ready, I am still playing, will continue to do so,” he said. “Whenever you feel the time is right, things are right, call me.”

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