Nagpur, Jan. 20 -- The Indian T20 ship is already on a voyage into the unknown. The upcoming T20I World Cup will be the first where India would be led by someone who is not a MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli or a Rohit Sharma. Their captain would be Suryakumar Yadav. Not an all-format, all-weather batting star. But a bonafide T20 specialist raised by the Indian Premier League, unbound from the risk-reward cautionary mindset that's integral to the longer formats. Surya - even his popular name is abridged - hasn't found much success while playing the longer formats, and at 35, it's too late in his career to search for other gears. It's fitting that the Indian captain will be marking his 100th T20I cap in Nagpur, where he was handed a Test debut - his only Test - three years back. Wednesday will be the first of the five-T20I matches against New Zealand, a series that will act as the final dry run before the real thing begins on Feb 7. It will be a milestone match for Surya, but also an examination because his batting graph has come hurtling down with the same speed it shot to prominence. Surya has only 190 runs to show in his previous 14 innings at an average of 17.26, at a strike rate of 124.2. "I know what to do. I know where things are going wrong," he said last month, before going into a break. A cursory glance tells you, his slump in form has extended for two years, his average dipped from 48 in 2021-23 to 20 in 2024-25. His strike rate has fallen from 172 to 141. This, without any appreciable difference in his attacking or control percentage, suggesting he has tried to stay true to his attacking game. Only now, he has failed to execute some of the outrageous shots like before. An obvious fall off has been his showings against pace bowling, before and after 2024 - Avg down from 43 to 14, SR down from 188 to 140. Over the years, Surya has expanded his scoring range in the off side, but his wristy scoops and flicks from insane batting positions is what stands him apart. In the past couple of years, the Mumbai bomber has lost some of his power and imagination, consistently holing out deep on the leg side. In his 32 dismissals, 29 have come against pace, 18 of them in the first 10 balls itself, suggesting how little spin he has been fed with, early in his innings. It's what makes T20 cricket so data centric, that forcing a batter to face an adverse match-up before he is in, can be decisive. In between this long run of flop shows, Surya could conjure a 717 run IPL 2025 at SR of 168. It was a stage where some teams allowed him to decimate spin with his long reach and sweeps. Perhaps, a slightly weaker bowling pool is all it takes for a high quality batter to be on his way. Surya is high quality no doubt. His career SR (163.23) is the third highest by an Indian. The only two batters to score quicker than him - Abhishek Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal have played far fewer games and are openers. But to Surya's credit, batting woes have not affected his captaincy. This remains the one format which India continues to dominate amid plenty of gloom in ODIs and Tests. India's T20 template has only been perfected even more after the 2024 World Cup win. The selectors have led the way by appointing Surya as captain; a most left-field of calls - he wasn't even captain of his IPL team. That makes, in many ways, Project Surya a test case of T20 cricket strategy; if a high risk tactician - both as batter and captain - can put it past every other conventional template in the game. Remember his first scoring shot in T20I cricket? Jofra Archer flicked for six over fine leg like a Test batter would cover drive. Too good to last, some had said. The doubters are mustering steam, again. Surya can't ask for a grander stage than a World Cup to prove 'em wrong. A couple of nights away from match eve, Surya slowly began to find his groove in the back half of the net session under lights at the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium on Monday. After top edging a few, some play and misses against medium pacers, the captain began to find both height and distance. Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah were spent by the time Surya came to the fast bowlers' net, but he was firmly on the offensive against India's spin trio - Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel and Ravi Bishnoi. The captain kept disrupting Axar's lengths with flat sweeps, hit Bishnoi inside out, anticipating his googlies, but gave ample respect to Chakravarthy, who quickly found his sweet spot on the pitch, before settling into his change-ups....