'He was a 19 year old kid not getting games. His career turned when...': Ponting's first impressions of Suryakumar Yadav

Speaking to the ICC, Ricky Ponting praised Suryakumar Yadav while revealing his first impression of the star Team India cricketer.

With Suryakumar Yadav included in Team India's roster for the upcoming T20 World Cup, it will mark a huge rise in his stardom since making his international debut in 2021. The batter caught the attention of fans after Mumbai Indians bought him in the 2018 auction and the way he set the 2020 and 2021 seasons of the IPL on fire, which later paved the way for a maiden India call-up. However, former Australia cricketer Ricky Ponting feels that Suryakumar's 'career started to turn around' when he was picked to play for Kolkata Knight Riders.

Suryakumar Yadav celebrates his half century during the 3rd T20I match between India and Australia. (ANI)

Ponting recalled spotting a young Suryakumar Yadav when he was at MI back in 2013-14. Suryakumar, then only a teenager, had to wait as the MI line-up was a star-studded one. In 2014, he made the jump to KKR and scored 608 runs from 54 matches across four seasons. Even though he returned to MI in 2018 and amassed 512 and 424 runs respectively during the next couple of years, it was his stint at KKR that Ponting believes Suryakumar really noticed what he was capable of.

"When I was in Mumbai, he was an 18-19 year old kid, a young man. He was in our squad not quite getting a game. The year after I left, he was traded to Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) where his career started to turn around. He got a bit of an opportunity in the middle order and then MI bought him back in the auction and has been a match-winning player for them for five or six seasons now, to the point that he is one of their retained players", Ponting told ICC.

On Wednesday, Suryakumar got back to his career-best No.2 spot, a rise of one position, in the latest ICC T20I batting rankings. After a first-ball duck in the second T20I against Australia, he bounced back to form with a blazing knock of 69 runs off 36 balls in the series decider at Hyderabad. Coming in to bat at the fall of Rohit Sharma's wicket with India's score reading 30/2, Suryakumar went on the attack and added a century partnership with Virat Kohli. Surya's 69 and Kohli's 53 played a vital role in India successfully chasing 188 and taking the series 2-1 against the Aussies.

Recently during an interview with Hindustan Times, Suryakumar had spoken about his mindset and said, "The mindset has always been the same since I started playing, it just got a good direction to it. Nothing has changed. I always enjoy it (fearless approach). When I made my debut for Mumbai as well, the only thing which came to my mind was attack. At that time also, I used to feel attack is the best defence.

"So, it kept building from that and slowly when I came into this set-up, I realised what my game was, how I can be a little different which can help my team from unreal situations, and I wanted to be a little different. I wanted to be batting in difficult situations and I wanted to be that factor a team is always looking for."