Former South African cricketer, AB de Villiers has backed Suryakumar Yadav and gave his own example to motivate the Mumbai Indians (MI) batter, while in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 MI lost their curtain-raiser against Royal Challengers Banglore (RCB) by 8 wickets. Surya was unable to show his 360-degree batting as he was dismissed for 15 runs in 16 balls.
While, in the recently concluded ODI series against Australia, the 32-year-old batter was dismissed for three consecutive ducks.
AB de Villiers talked about Suryakumar Yadav’s poor form-
“He is probably in that phase now where he needs to do something. But the secret of it all is not to panic and not to change your game plan. He has got to stick to what has been working for him over the years.
“Yes, maybe, he can try and remember ‘what are my basics’ or ‘what did I do very well when I was just consistently scoring runs’ and because obviously he took his game to a completely different level,” said the Ex-RCB batter.
Whereas AB has already announced retirement from all formats of cricket after playing IPL in 2021 for RCB, meanwhile Surya debuted in IPL in the 2012 edition and started playing for MI from the 2018 season onwards.
“It is not a bad thing just to come a level down and spend a little time in there before you pop out again. You cannot always score 100 off 40 balls – it is not always going to happen. That is something I had to learn the hard way with the Chinnaswamy crowd going, expecting me to score a hundred in every game.
“I sometimes had to tell myself, ‘You know what AB let’s be honest here, you are not reading the ball very. Just make sure you go run-a-ball and give Virat the strike or just get someone else on. And then slowly and surely I get one good shot and then I am back in the game,” he further added.
That's a biggie! ??
Watch how Michael Bracewell got Suryakumar Yadav OUT after conceding a four ?#TATAIPL | #RCBvMI pic.twitter.com/SBdNGBlhuK
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 2, 2023
Surya in the recently-concluded Australian series was not impressive in both the Test and limited-overs formats. The Mumbaikar was handed the spot in the longer format of the game after his impressive performance in T20Is. However, he failed in his debut Test at Nagpur, later he was replaced by Shreyas Iyer for the rest of the three Tests matches. Yadav was bowled after scoring 8 runs by Nathan Lyon in the first game of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2023.
“There will always be a sign when you get into good form; there will be a bad delivery from the bowler or you will hit a good straight drive and then you can say ‘hold on, I am back in form and let’s hurt the bowlers’. You just have to manage the gears – I call them gears between first and the fifth gear, ‘where I am at the moment.
“He is probably in second gear at the moment. Respect the fact that you are in second gear, find a way to get to the third and you can push from there,” concluded de Villiers.
Whereas, for their first home game of IPL 2023, Rohit Sharma-led side will take on Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, on April 8.