Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are the two pillars of the Indian cricket system of present times and it won’t be wrong to say that they both have certainly dominated the Indian cricket over the years with their superb performances. However, there is one Indian player who has succeeded in coming out of the shadows of both the cricketers (Virat and Rohit) and he has impressed everyone with his superb performances in the T20 format.
We are talking about Suryakumar Yadav who is currently the number one batter in T20s as per the ICC rankings and the year 2022 certainly belonged to SKY who represents Mumbai Indians in the IPL. SKY played 31 T20Is in 2022 in which he scored 1164 runs at a strike rate of 187.43 and it also included two smashing centuries.
SKY is sometimes compared with former South African legendary cricketer AB de Villiers because of his ability to play cricket shots in every corner of the ground. AB de Villiers was known as Mr. 360 during his playing days and nowadays many fans of Suryakumar Yadav have also started calling him Mr. 360.
The former South African skipper Graeme Smith feels that there are many similarities between Suryakumar Yadav and AB de Villiers. Interestingly it was Graeme Smith who backed AB de Villiers in his beginning days which helped ABD in establishing himself at the international platform.
During an interview, Graeme Smith states that he has seen SKY for quite some time now as he was lucky to see him play in the IPL. Graeme Smith was a part of the commentary panel for some duration and as per him, SKY always had the talent and seeing him play is just like watching AB de Villiers. He adds that it is really great to have players like SKY because they bring a lot of energy and people switch on TVs to watch players like him.
Recently, Suryakumar Yadav has also expressed his desire of representing the country in the purest format of the game.
Is SKY the next ABD? What do you think? Let us know your views in this regard.