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‘Walk the talk’: Chopra blasts Rahul Dravid, Rohit Sharma for demoting Suryakumar in 3rd ODI
Former India opener Aakash Chopra was not happy with the team management's call to demote Surya. He commended head coach Rahul Dravid and captain Rohit Sharma for backing Surya despite his twin failures but he disagreed with their distance of sending him at No.7 in the series decider.
Suryakumar Yadav was beaten for pace in the first ODI in Mumbai. Mitchell Starc unleashed one of his dreaded in-dippers and hit Surya on the back leg even before he could get his bat down. The umpire gave him not out but had to reverse his decision after Australia took a review. In the second ODI, Surya hung back and Starc once again darted the ball back at a brisk pace and hit him right in front of the stumps. This time he was given out on the field. Virat Kohli, the non-striker, advised him not to waste a review. A couple of days later, SKY walked out to bat in an entirely different situation. He didn't have Starc glaring down at him or any other Australian pacer. Instead, he had to deal with spinners Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa.
With no trace of stress due to what happened in the previous two ODIs, a confident SKY marked his guard against Agar. The left-arm spinner bowled a flatter one that pitched around the off stump and went on with the angle. It kept a tad low too. Surya, instead of going forward, cleared his front leg and tried to cut it behind point. The ball rushed into him and smashed onto his stumps. With his head down in disbelief, Surya stood for a couple of seconds before walking back to the pavilion with an awkward smile.A
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From the unimaginable highs of the T20Is, he had just the rock bottom in ODIs becoming the first cricketer to register a hat-trick of golden ducks in the format. Apart from the match situation, the bowler and the mode of dismissal, there was another difference in SKY's fate in the third ODI in Chennai. Instead of walking out to bat, he came in to bat at No.7 in India's 270-run chase on Wednesday.
Was it done to protect SKY? Or maybe to give him a T20-like feel of batting lesser overs? If that is the case, won't it dent the confidence of a dynamic player like Suryakumar Yadav, who has been the best T20I batter in the world in the last couple of years?
Former India opener Aakash Chopra, therefore, was not happy with the team management's call to demote Surya. He commended head coach Rahul Dravid and captain Rohit Sharma for backing Surya despite his twin failures but he disagreed with their distance of sending him at No.7 in the series decider.
"Playing SKY in the last ODI was the right thing to do. Sending him at 7 wasn’t. If you want to back someone and have faith in their abilities, you ought to walk the talk. IMHO," Chopra tweeted.
Chopra's tweet did not have any mentions of Dravid and Rohit but it was clear that his message was for them as it was Dravid who in the pre-match conference ahead of the third ODI said he would not read too much into SKY's first-ball ducks. The same was echoed by Rohit Sharma after India lost the third ODI and SKY got out for a golden duck for the third time in a row.
Rohit said Suryakumar was initially slotted to bat at number 5 but the team management held him back to face the Australian attack in the last 15-20 overs. Suryakumar actually came out at number 7.
"He plays spin really well which is why we wanted to hold him back and give him the last 15-20 overs where he could play his game. But it’s really unfortunate he could only play three balls in the series. That can happen to anyone. The potential, the quality, is always there. He is just going through that (lean) phase right now.
"Once we played the first 10 overs, the ball did not swing at all. There was no question of swing where Surya could be troubled or anything like that. It was a tactical move. We wanted to use his potential at the back end along with Hardik. These two players would have been ideal for us but unfortunately, they got out."
