‘Switched from hard work to…’: How a frustrated Suryakumar Yadav tweaked his game to get India call-up

India batting star Suryakumar Yadav is now known as SKY and Mr 360. He has been the top performer in the last calendar year. However, getting into the India team was not easy for Yadav who was left frustrated waiting for the elusive call-up. That is when he decided to tweak certain aspects of his game to turn things around. 

“After 2017-18, me and my wife, Devisha, sat down and decided, let's do some smart work from here on. You have worked hard, you have come this far, let's do something else and we will see what happens," the top order batsman was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo's Cricket Monthly.

Now part of the star-studded India T20 World Cup squad, SKY changed his training regimen, took to dieting and changed his batting approach to favour the off side. By 2020, his body was “completely different,” Yadav said. 

His call-up and international debut came in 2021, with Suryakumar Yadav well over 30 years in age. It came after 11 years of being a first-class cricketer.

He said that he would practice mindlessly before and end up being frustrated. But changing his training towards “quality” from “quantity” helped him improve consistency. 

"It took time. It took around a year and a half for me to realise what my body is used to - what will help me, how can I move forward. Eventually we both realised, yes, we are moving in the right direction. Then everything was on autopilot. I knew what I had to do, how I had to train, how much practice I had to do," he was quoted as saying.

"Before that I was just practising, practising, getting a little frustrated sometimes. And I felt there was no quality in that - there was a lot of quantity. But after 2018 there was a lot of quality in my training, diet, net sessions and everything, which helped me really well. And then it was a complete build-up, runs coming in all formats, in the IPL as well. So consistency came with that and finally I broke the door,” he added. 

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(With inputs from PTI)