Suryakumar Yadav was available for selection for Mumbai’s opening Ranji Trophy fixture against Chandigarh, but the selection committee overlooked the experienced batter, raising a lot of eyebrows. The T20 World Cup-winning captain, who finds himself out of favour when it comes to the national setup, had skipped the pre-season training routines for Mumbai, and this has emerged as the main reason behind his exclusion from the squad. Sources within the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) confirmed to HT Digital that the selectors wanted to give youngsters a chance and that picking Suryakumar would have left a young batter hard done by.
The MCA had organised a training camp for the Mumbai players towards the end of June at the Cricket Club of India and the Mumbai Cricket Association’s BKC Ground, and the Ranji Trophy probables had been training since then. Suryakumar’s absence gave the selectors a reason to ignore him. Moreover, the committee wanted to give youngsters a chance, and this too swayed their decision in choosing the squad.
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“Since the end of June, our Mumbai team has been practising in a pre-season camp. Suryakumar Yadav wasn’t a part of the training camp, and he didn’t play a single red-ball game. If Suryakumar was picked, then Musheer Khan would have been dropped. Musheer has been performing, and the selectors have backed the youngsters,” the source said.
The Mumbai team for the Ranji Trophy was announced on Monday evening, and Suryakumar had made himself available for the tournament just a day earlier. On Monday, Mumbai’s chief selector Rajesh Pawar stated that Suryakumar’s lack of recent red-ball match practice led to him being overlooked.
“He is a very big player. But he hasn’t played red-ball cricket in the last one and a half years. Should he play a few red-ball games, he can definitely come into the side,” Pawar said.
‘White-ball captaincy’
However, the MCA are open to considering the T20 World Cup-winning captain as their skipper for the white-ball tournaments if Shreyas Iyer is not available. “We will consider him for white-ball captaincy if Shreyas is not available,” said the MCA source.
Speaking of Suryakumar, he was last seen in action in the T20 Mumbai League after the Indian Premier League (IPL) stint with the Mumbai Indians. Earlier this year, the right-handed batter was removed as India’s T20I captain and also dropped from the squad, paving the way for Shreyas Iyer. The call to drop and sack Suryakumar came months after he led the Men in Blue to the T20 World Cup title on home soil.
Speaking of the Mumbai Ranji squad, Shardul Thakur will miss the opening few matches after suffering a hand injury. Siddhesh Lad will be leading Mumbai in the 2026-27 season, and the squad for the red-ball tournament opener features Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sarfaraz Khan, as well as regulars such as Shams Mulani and Tushar Deshpande.
Mumbai squad: Siddhesh Lad (captain), Ayush Mhatre (vice-capt), Shams Mulani, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tanush Kotian, Atharva Ankolekar, Divyaansh Saxena, Tushar Deshpande, Musheer Khan, Mohit Avasthi, Sarfaraz Khan, Sylvester D’Souza, Suved Parkar, Onkar Tarmale, Aakash Anand (wk), Hardik Tamore (wk).