No more goodbyes: Has Indian cricket finally learned to move on?

We are from the land of Vizzy. It is worth remembering that. A cricketer of mediocre abilities, he used his power and clout to become the captain of India during the 1936 tour to England. His appointment was entirely down to his social manoeuvring and deep pockets. He had issues with India's first ever captain CK Nayudu, kept him away, and even handed a Test cap to a bowler who had insulted Nayudu at the breakfast table. Vizzy's captaincy lasted exactly one tour, but the culture he embodied — power, sentiment, and clout over cold logic, took rather longer to leave Indian cricket.

It is only now, nine decades later, that it truly might be leaving.

The latest casualty is Suryakumar Yadav. Or rather, the latest symbol. The selectors have moved on from the T20I captain who won them the Asia Cup and, at home in Ahmedabad, successfully defended the T20 World Cup. He is 35, his numbers have curdled badly over the past two seasons, and there is a younger man waiting. That is the story on paper. But Indian cricket has never operated purely on paper, which is why this moment carries the weight it does.

The backlash was swift, as it always is. Aakash Chopra, one of the sharper voices in the commentary box, put the dissenting case plainly.

"You can't deal with a World Cup-winning captain like you kill a house fly," he said in his YouTube show.

"He won a trophy. That must mean something. You ask him to exit instead of just dropping him. I feel he should have been given a couple more series."

It is a reasonable argument, and it comes from a reasonable place: the idea that great service earns the right to a dignified farewell. Indian cricket has long believed this, often to its own detriment.

THE PRECEDENTS

Consider the precedents. Sunil Gavaskar, during India's 1986 tour of England, told Imran Khan he intended to retire at the end of the series. Imran persuaded him otherwise, telling him Pakistan was coming to India and he wanted to face him one last time. Gavaskar eventually retired from Test cricket after the Pakistan series of 1987. That extra year, granted on sentiment and the charm of a farewell rivalry, happened to produce one of cricket's most treasured milestones — the 10,000 Test runs. But the point stands: Gavaskar chose when to go. The system accommodated him.

Sachin Tendulkar's case was even more illustrative. The wait for his hundredth international hundred stretched across years and extended his ODI career well past its natural end. He played 200 Tests. He played his final series at home, in Mumbai, to a standing ovation that lasted longer than some innings. He chose the door, the time, and the music.

MS Dhoni took it furthest of all. He was booed at Lord's in 2018, in an India shirt, by a partisan crowd that had lost patience. He played his last World Cup in 2019 and then vanished — no announcement, no retirement, no word. For over a year, the Indian dressing room held its breath. Every selection conversation circled back to the same question. Had he wanted to come back, the door would have been held open. He knew it. The country knew it. He finally retired in August 2020, on his own terms, in a sentence posted on Instagram at seven in the evening.

This was how Indian cricket worked. The superstars were not managed; they were deferred to.

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT

Then came Gautam Gambhir as head coach and Ajit Agarkar as chief selector, and something shifted.

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli between them represent the greatest batting partnership in the history of Indian cricket. Both sounded positive about playing the 2025-27 Test cycle. Both returned to the Ranji Trophy to demonstrate intent ahead of the England series. Both retired. The message, delivered not with malice but with a clarity that Indian cricket had rarely managed, was unmistakable. A poor home season in 2024 and a difficult Border-Gavaskar Trophy had told the selectors what they needed to know. Form, not legacy, was now the currency.

Their ODI futures followed a similar script. Both Agarkar and Gambhir made it clear publicly: runs and form would determine selection as India prepared for the 2027 World Cup. No deference. No grace-and-favour berths.

Suryakumar's case, then, is not an isolated decision. It is the latest data point in a pattern.

The numbers that ended his captaincy are not flattering. In the year before his removal, he averaged 13.62 in T20Is at a strike rate of 130 — figures that belong, as someone in the press box observed recently, to a lower-order pinch-hitter, not a man who had spent the better part of two years ranked No. 1 in the world. The year before that he had averaged 26. In his last ten T20Is, he managed just two scores of fifty or above. IPL 2026 offered one final audition and he scored 270 runs in 13 matches for a Mumbai Indians side that finished ninth. A wrist injury was speculated. Suryakumar dismissed the talk during the IPL. He kept insisting he was not out of form, merely out of runs. It is a distinction that clearly mattered to him. To the selectors, the scorebook told only one story.

He had won two major international trophies and put together one of the best captaincy records in Indian T20I history. He had been picked over Hardik Pandya when the selectors needed a successor to Rohit Sharma after the 2024 World Cup — a call that required nerve and conviction. His win percentage as captain ended north of 80 per cent. Under his captaincy, India won 42 out of 52 matches. He had spoken of targeting the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where cricket makes its debut, as the next chapter. The selectors appear to have decided that road runs through someone else.

In Shreyas Iyer, they have a ready-made middle-order successor — a batter who has elevated his T20 game significantly over the last two years, whose leadership of Punjab Kings in IPL 2026 drew praise for its fearlessness and man-management. Rajat Patidar, the pillar of RCB's back-to-back title wins, waits patiently behind him. The pipeline is full. The selectors have no reason to look back.

NO SUPERSTAR CULTURE?

What Gambhir and Agarkar have quietly engineered, beyond the headline decisions, is the dismantling of superstar culture before it could take root again. Shubman Gill arrived in the T20I set-up in 2025 carrying enormous expectations. He was handed the vice-captaincy. To accommodate him, the selectors broke up a productive opening pair in Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma — a decision that drew significant criticism.

When Gill failed to produce the goods, he was dropped. Not eased out. Not rested. Dropped. A projected all-format star left out of a T20 World Cup squad. The selectors admitted, in effect, that a mistake had been made and corrected it. That second act, the willingness to reverse a high-profile call, required as much courage as the first.

Agarkar is a rare chief selector: one with a voice, a stated position, and the evident willingness to defend it. Gambhir wants this transition handled his way. Together they have created something unfamiliar in Indian cricket, a hierarchy in which the team management holds more sway than the players within it.

Whether this is a permanent cultural shift or merely a phase is the question that lingers. Indian cricket has a long memory and an even longer capacity for sentiment. The next generation of superstars, if they arrive at sufficient scale, may yet tilt the balance back. Rohit and Kohli may have been the last of the untouchables — the kind of names around whom an entire administrative culture organised itself.

For now, though, the door does not wait.

Vizzy bought his way in and left a trail of chaos behind him. Gavaskar played one extra year because a rival asked him to. Tendulkar played until the country had finished crying. Dhoni left when he felt like it, on a summer evening, in a social media post.

Suryakumar Yadav won a World Cup and defended it. He won the Asia Cup. He captained with intelligence and won at a rate that would have made his predecessors proud. And then, without ceremony or extended goodbye, he was told the new chapter had already begun.

That is not how this country used to work. Now, apparently, it does.

- Ends

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