Delhi: Among the special changes that took place from the T20 World Cup winning team to the team selected for the Ireland and England tour in the name of preparing for India’s future, the most special among them is the removal of the World Cup winning captain. This is a bigger and more talked about issue than making Shreyas Iyer the captain because the current T20 World Cup winning captain, Suryakumar Yadav, was completely removed without trial. The captaincy was lost and along with it the place in the team. For the second consecutive year, India has changed its ICC trophy-winning captain just before the next tournament.

This is almost a reflection of Australia’s selection policy in which they say that first make a place in the team as a player and they will choose the captain from those who come in the team. In this way, the captain with whom only three months ago was at the top of T20 World Cricket and had won the title in front of an enthusiastic home crowd, was dismissed. The interesting thing is that Surya Kumar’s international career is the blueprint of the selection policy: when he was in his best phase as a youth, he was not selected, at the age of more than 30 years (30 years and 181 days), he was brought to Team India, especially to reshape the Indian batting and also made him the captain. Won the World Cup with them and then removed them.

Despite a late start, what Sky has achieved in about 5 years is nothing short of a miracle. T20 International career record: 3272 runs at 36.35 average and 162.94 strike rate with 4 centuries and 25 fifties and won 17 Player of the Match and 6 Player of the Series awards during this period. As captain, he won 42 matches in 50 matches and took Team India to the Asia Cup and the historic T20 World Cup title. Won two consecutive ICC T20 International Cricketer of the Year awards (2022, 2023) and is the only player to win T20 Player of the Match awards in 11 different countries.

Then what went wrong? Bad form in the World Cup. Scored 242 runs in 9 innings and the strike rate dropped to 136.72. The special thing is that he was seen struggling in scoring runs. IPL 2026 gave further air to this issue. Only 270 runs in 13 innings and a strike rate of 147.54. The most important thing is that there were only 10 sixes in the entire season and this is a record of a player who used to win the award on the count of 6. Age about 35 years at that. So all these factors were caught by Ajit Agarkar’s committee.

Last year Rohit Sharma and now Surya Kumar Yadav: Both were removed from captaincy after winning the ICC title. Surya is also out of the team. Is there any other such example where after winning the World Cup, the captaincy and also the place in the team went away? The two most popular examples in this context, although in both of these, the selectors did not get the opportunity to remove the captain:

Imran Khan: Never played for his country after winning the World Cup (1992). A rebellion had started against him in the team in the middle of the World Cup, but the players did not lose focus from the World Cup. Supported, won the World Cup but after that the atmosphere deteriorated so much that he became a villain. When he realized that leaving aside continuing as captain, he might not even get a place in the team for the next England tour, so he retired.

Michael Clarke: Even before the World Cup 2015, Clarke had decided to retire. When they won the World Cup, they advised him to change his decision but he did not agree.

Two more good examples are of Rohit Sharma and Darren Sammy:

Rohit Sharma: After winning the Champions Trophy 2025, he was removed from the captaincy on the plea of ​​poor form and the need to build a team for the future. The interesting thing is that the same Ajit Agarkar committee of Mumbai which removed Rohit Sharma, also removed Surya. When the team went to Australia, Shubman Gill was made the ODI captain in place of Rohit Sharma. Ajit Agarkar’s argument then was that ‘it is impossible to have three different captains in three formats.’ However, Rohit Sharma was not dropped from the team.

Darren Sammy: He stepped down as West Indies T20 International captain in August 2016, just four months after the team’s victory in the ICC World Twenty20 in India. Chairman of selectors Courtney Brown told him over the phone that this decision has been taken ‘solely on the basis of the performance of the players’ and they are preparing for the future. Sammy was also dropped from the team for the next T20 series against India in Florida. Sammy, however, did not remain silent and gave an emotional and very famous speech, in which he talked a lot about the bitter contract dispute with the board, lack of support from the board and poor communication with the players. He never played for the West Indies again.