Suryakumar Yadav takes dig at playing style of Rohit Sharma and Co at 2024 T20 World Cup: 'Won't work...'

India captain Suryakumar Yadav has taken a veiled jibe on the playing style of the 2024 T20 World Cup-winning team saying that when he took over the captaincy, he knew that such tactics would not work going ahead.

Suryakumar was part of the 2024 T20 World Cup-winning side which won in the West Indies and the United States under the leadership of Rohit Sharma. It was an unbeaten campaign and India's first ICC trophy since 2013. However, the current Indian T20I captain thinks that the style of play of that team had to be changed after he took over captaincy.

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2024 T20 World Cup was among the slowest scoring editions of the tournament due to sometimes unplayable batting conditions, especially in the United States. Suryakumar revealed that once he became the captain, he adopted a new brand of cricket where personal milestones were not to be paid heed to.

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"We knew the way we played the 2024 T20 World Cup — that brand of cricket — won’t work going ahead," the 2026 T20 World Cup-winning captain said in a recent interview with the Indian Express. "So we decided: from hereon we will not pay attention to personal milestones, the goal is to win games."

"If you noticed, till the semifinals none of our players were top run-getters or top wicket-takers. But we qualified and kept winning. Every game, every player contributed. It was very important to spread this thing like a virus in the team from the start. We planted this team culture 18 months back," said Suryakumar who became just the third Indian captain after MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma to win the T20 World Cup.

"Everyone used to think India plays differently in bilaterals and differently in ICC events. We wanted to change this thinking. We will play ICC events the same way we play bilaterals — more courageously, more openly," he said.