India won the T20I three-game series against Sri Lanka on July 30. Suryakumar Yadav who was awarded the ‘Player of the Series’ expressed his joy about leading the team to victory. While speaking during the post match presentation, Sky said that he wants to be a leader of the team rather than a mere captain of a cricket team.
In his first series as full-time T20I captain, Suryakumar scored two brilliant knocks in the first two games, but getting two wickets with his off-breaks in a thrilling Super Over win was an icing on the cake.
During the post-match presentation, he said, “Like I said before the series, I don't want to be the captain, I want to be the leader.”
The captain also couldn't stop praising his teammates and said, “The amount of skill they have, self-confidence, it makes my job easy. The positivity, the care for each other is unbelievable. After the last game, I told few boys will be rested and they were ready to sit out."
“They have made my job easy. I have little pressure when I bat,” he added.
Sky further added, “More than the last over, I feel when we were around 30/4 and 48 for 5, how the boys showed character, 140 was a par score on that track. I told, if we put our heart in, we could pull it off.”
Sri Lanka skipper Charith Asalanka didn't have an answer as to what went wrong with the middle-order in all three games.
Sri Lanka expressed significant disappointment, particularly with the performance of their middle and lower-middle order. He criticised the poor shot selection and noted that Wanindu Hasaranga was promoted up the order to counter the spinners and given the freedom to score boundaries.
“Definitely, really disappointed, especially the middle-order and lower-middle order. Very bad shot selection. The thinking was spinners were bowling and that's why Wanindu Hasaranga came up the order and we gave him the license to hit one or two boundaries,” Asalanka said.
“I think especially we played some wrong shots and when the ball gets old, the shot selection has to be spot on. We can't give excuses and we have to do more than this. I want to see good batting performance in ODIs and I think the boys will do better,” the dejected Lankan skipper added.
(With inputs from PTI)
