Suryakumar Yadav struck his second T20I hundred in the second T20I against New Zealand at the Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui on Sunday.
Suryakumar reached the three-figure mark with consecutive fours off Lockie Ferguson in the 19th over, which went for 22 runs; all coming off Suryakumar’s bat. He finished unbeaten on 111 off 51 balls, with 11 fours and seven sixes.
READ |How Suryakumar Yadav became the new Mr. 360 and lit up the T20 World Cup
“In T20 cricket, a hundred was really special, but it was also important for me to bat till the end. Hardik [Pandya] told me we needed a score of 190-195 and [I am] happy we got there. We had a word in the 16th over that we wanted to take it deep with only [Deepak] Hooda and Washington [Sundar] to follow. I’ve been doing the same thing in the nets and all practice sessions,” Suryakumar said during the mid-innings break.
Suryakumar becomes the second Indian batter to score two T20I centuries in a calendar year after Rohit Sharma in 2018.
Suryakumar had hit a sensational 48-ball century in a losing cause for India against England in the third Twenty20 international at Trent Bridge in July this year.
Suryakumar was the third-highest run-scorer in the recently concluded T20 World Cup in Australia with 239 runs in six innings at a brilliant strike rate of a shade under 190. He also went past 1000 runs in 2022 during his unbeaten 61 in the last group game of the T20 World Cup against Zimbabwe in Melbourne. The only other man to have scored 1000-plus T20I runs in a calendar year is Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan, who amassed 1326 in 2021.
Suryakumar has amassed 1151 runs in T20Is in 2022, the most among all batters, at an average and strike rate of 47.95 and 188.37 respectively. The 32-year-old made his debut for India in a T20I against England in Ahmedabad last year and has accumulated 1395 runs in the format so far, including two hundreds and 12 fifties.
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