India batter Suryakumar Yadav was once again hailed by fans on social media after he struck a stupendous 68 off 40 deliveries against South Africa in Perth in the T20 World Cup on Sunday. Indian cricket supporters were in awe of Suryakumar Yadav after he brought India back into the contest against the Proteas with his whirlwind knock. At 49/5 the Men in Blue had their backs to the wall, but Suryakumar Yadav played a blinder, eventually hitting his second successive fifty in the prestigious competition Down Under. In the process, Suryakumar Yadav became just the third batter to score more than 900 runs in T20Is in a calendar year. Other than Suryakumar Yadav, Pakistan's Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan appear in the elite list. While Mohammad Rizwan is on top of the charts with 1326 runs from 29 matches last year, Babar Azam accumulated 939 runs from 29 matches in 2021.

Though India lost the contest against South Africa by 5 wickets, netizens showered rich praise on Suryakumar Yadav, declaring his innings as “surreal”.

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Suryakumar Yadav's Perth heroics came for special praise from former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming and ex-South Africa captain Faf du Plessis. Faf du Plessis and Stephen Fleming believed that Suryakumar Yadav's aggressive approach towards the game regardless of the situation has made him as dangerous as he is in T20Is.

“His skillset is so high that as a bowler you don't feel like you can tie him down to certain areas. He's got all the different shots, scores in all the different areas,” Faf du Plessis told ESPNcricinfo.

“The thing that stands out for me with him is his composure. With a guy who has got so many shots, I almost never see him be frantic and feel rushed. He's just got this calmness about him,” he stated.

“He knows when to pull that trigger, go through the gears, and he just always looks calm. He's just a fantastic T20 player to watch. He's the perfect guy that, as a youngster, you look at how you go through different gears at different stages of the game,” Faf du Plessis added.

“It's difficult to find an area of weakness. He just has a really positive mindset. And he has a very open and aggressive stance which allows him to play in a lot of unusual areas. So he's sort of created a technique which bowlers are finding it hard to find the right lengths [against] because if they're full he'll hit all the way over cover or around; if they're fractionally short he'll go over third man and point,” Stephen Fleming said.

“And anything straight, he's very good with the short ball. So he's developed a technique that's very hard to find an area of weakness [in],” Stephen Fleming noted.

However, the ultimate praise for him came from cricket journalist Sidharth Monga who claimed that his knock in Perth was “truly special”, considering it came on one of the quickest surfaces in the sport.

Despite wickets falling around him, the tempo of Suryakumar Yadav's knock never dropped as he slammed his way through to an explosive 68 off 40 balls.

“In Sydney Suryakumar made a mockery of the need for a set batter in the last 10 overs, which have been far more productive than the front 10 in this World Cup. In Perth he played a truly special knock on probably the fastest and bounciest track he might have played on. It was definitely the fastest and bounciest of this World Cup, what with first slip standing at almost the edge of the 30-yard ring when South Africa bowled. Suryakumar's innings came against a quick four-man pace attack. From a dire situation,” Sidharth Monga wrote in his analysis for ESPNCricinfo.

“In a match where runs came at 6.75 an over, Suryakumar went at over 10. He scored more than half of India's runs in exactly one-third the balls. Nobody on either side scored more. Nobody scored quicker. He made the pace and the bounce his friend, jumping inside the line and helping balls along behind square. His best shot perhaps was the flat-bat slap back over Kagiso Rabada's head for four. Perhaps not quite Virat Kohli vs Haris Rauf levels, but this was still a shot to be marvelled at: off the back foot, against a genuine fast bowler on the bounciest track of the tournament, and back down the ground for four,” Sidharth Monga added.

“Suryakumar went after just the fourth ball he faced, one ball after Deepak Hooda's wicket had left India 42 for 4 in the eighth over. It would soon become for 49 for 5 in the ninth, but Suryakumar hit Anrich Nortje for a six in the next over. It wasn't as though he wasn't clinical: he targeted Keshav Maharaj, taking 25 off 12 balls from him,” Sidharth Monga concluded.