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Gavaskar's 'nothing' advice for struggling Suryakumar Yadav creates ripples
When Sunil Gavaskar was asked about the advice he would give to SKY to get his form back, the legendary batter came up with an unexpected reply.
Suryakumar Yadav's hat-trick of golden ducks -- first-ball dismissals -- has already led to scathing criticism. There have been demands to drop him from ODIs and give Sanju Samson, who averages 66 in the 11 ODIs that he has played so far, a fair run. The Indian team management, however, seems adamant. They are ready to back Surya, mainly because of the kind of performances he has put together in T20Is. He is currently the top-ranked batter in the shortest format and has scored three centuries in a span of six months. But in ODIs, he has been all at sea.
In the recently-concluded ODI series against Australia, he registered an unwanted world record of becoming the first cricketer to be dismissed for a golden duck three times in a row. He was out LBW to Mitchell Starc in the first and the second ODIs while Ashton Agar clean-bowled him in the final match in Chennai.
What is wrong with SKY? When Sunil Gavaskar was asked about the advice he would give to SKY to get his form back, the legendary batter came up with an unexpected reply. "Nothing, nothing," he said in the post-match show on Star Sports.
"He has just got to understand that this can happen to the best of players and it has happened to the best of players. So I think, all he has got to do now is focus… forget these 3 matches and focus on the IPL, get runs over there. Once he gets runs in the IPL, he will come back confident for the next one-day game," he added.
Gavaskar said it is difficult to find faults in a batter who has been dismissed off the first ball thrice. "Well, he was out first-ball 3 times. It's very difficult to say what is going wrong. Yes, there were two good deliveries that Mitchell Starc bowled in the first 2 matches. Yes, he might have been a little too anxious," the former India captain said.
Interestingly, India captain Rohit Sharma said something similar in the post-match press conference. "He (Suryakumar) played only three balls in the series. I don't know how much you can look into it. He got three good balls," Rohit said after India lost the third and final ODI by 21 runs to concede the series 1-2 to Australia.
"(On Wednesday) I didn't think it was that great a ball. He just chose the wrong shot. He should have, maybe, come forward. He knows best."
When asked whether this string of ducks could impact his place in India's ODI World Cup squad, Gavaskar said it would depend on how he performs in the IPL and also in the West Indies series.
"I mean, it depends on the kind of form that he shows in the IPL. There are few ODI matches as well in the West Indies etc. Depending on all those factors, you want to look at his place in the team," Gavaskar added.
