Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has cautioned Suryakumar Yadav about his ‘dangerous tactic’ ahead of India’s Super 8s game against South Africa at Ahmedabad on February 22, 2026, in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2026.
After having a lull with the bat in 2025, Suryakumar Yadav has roared back in form in 2026 in T20Is and helped India win from a tricky situation in their T20 World Cup opener against the USA in Mumbai. He continued his fine form against other teams as well, but there was something concerning that Sanjay Manjrekar noticed about the India skipper’s batting.
Manjrekar put the spotlight on Suryakumar Yadav and also on Tilak Varma for their very slow batting, as was evident against Pakistan and the Netherlands, and stated that the T20 format no longer merits a place for batters who want to play the anchor role.
Tilak and Surya have both come under fire for failing to score boundaries during the middle overs period. Manjrekar has now also expressed the same opinion.
“There's something I'm seeing in Suryakumar Yadav, which I'm not liking too much. 77 for 6, India against the USA at Wankhede. And Suryakumar Yadav had to change his game, which he did brilliantly. Just slowed down a little bit and then exploded and got a great score, player of the match, and everything. Since then, I think he's taking that a bit too far. Against Pakistan, when India lost a couple of wickets, he really pulled down the shutters quite a lot,” Manjrekar said in a video he shared on Instagram.
“He and Tilak Varma are both playing slightly conservatively. And in the end, what happens is people like Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, and Rinku Singh are not really tapped into as resources as much. In T20 cricket, that's a dangerous thing to do when a senior player or a captain feels that he's got to stay in, especially batting first,” he added.
Manjrekar stated that it would be detrimental to the team if the captain felt that he needed to be more cautious when batting and began to play the role of an accumulator. He stated that, given the depth of the Indian team, every batsman may just aim to tee off from ball number one.
“When you're setting targets of 200 plus winning scores, if you have somebody in the top four who believes that he's the guy who's got to control the innings and make sure that he's the one who'll take India to a certain score, that is a very dangerous tactic. And considering that India has such fantastic players with Axar Patel at number eight or Washington Sundar at number eight, no batter must think like that,” said Manjrekar.
“He must trust the batters to come in after him and try and maximize returns every ball that he faces. When you have such depth in your batting, I don't think one batter, a single batter, should play in with this feeling that he's got to control the innings. That is the danger where you'll bat first and just not get enough runs on the board because you've just played too conservatively and there are wickets in hand, but you've not used your resources, and you've just got 180 runs against a strong chasing team. So, Surya has got to be careful about that,” he added.
Here is the video:
