'He didn't have a great time as a player, but he lifted the World Cup': Ricky Ponting on Suryakumar Yadav

NEW DELHI — Ricky Ponting has hailed Suryakumar Yadav’s leadership after India captured the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026, arguing that the skipper’s greatest triumph came in the moments no camera captured. Yadav walked off the Barbados turf with trophy in hand despite managing only 158 runs in eight innings after his match-winning 84* off 49 against the United States in the opener, and Ponting believes that paradox defines modern captaincy.

“It’s about a lot more than what they do off the field, the things that people don’t see and how they interact with their players,” Ponting told the ICC website, recalling his own spells of lean runs while leading Australia. “When you’re not batting at your absolute best, captaincy can become really difficult. When you are batting well, captaincy can become really easy.”

Ponting reserved special praise for the way Yadav shepherded two of India’s most volatile talents through contrasting emotional arcs. Abhishek Sharma, the ICC’s top-ranked T20I batter, slumped to three straight ducks and a string of single-figure scores before detonating a 21-ball 52 in the final—the fastest fifty of the tournament, reached in 18 deliveries. Sanju Samson, meanwhile, was dropped, recalled, and then unleashed: a 97* in a virtual knockout against West Indies, back-to-back 89s in the semi-final against England and the final against New Zealand, and a competition-high 321 runs for India in just five innings.

“You don’t have to worry about the staples,” Ponting said. “It’s more the guys on the fringe and the younger guys going up and down with their emotions and battling with their form, the ones you have to spend the most time with.”

The Australian great underlined the courage required to keep faith with Samson at the top of the order after an early-tournament axing. “For India to stick with him there, that was a big call to make… If you get the backing of the coaching staff and the captain, then that’s all you need—just a pat on the back or an arm around the shoulder to say, ‘we’re sticking with you, we believe in you.’”

Ponting expects the full story of India’s campaign—how Yadav steadied nerves in dressing-room huddles, convinced bowlers to hold their nerve in powerplays, and coaxed career-defining performances from misfiring stars—will filter out in coming weeks. For now, he is content to salute a captain who ended the tournament exactly where every player dreams to stand: beneath a shower of confetti, gloved hands wrapped around a World Cup trophy, personal statistics rendered irrelevant by collective glory.