India stand-in captain Hardik Pandya, a true-blue fanboy of legendary captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has started to play like him when it comes to finishing innings. Once known to hit the big shots from the word go, Pandya often takes his time to get his eyes in before opening up his arms especially since having started to lead Gujarat Titans and the national team.
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Call it the weight of captaincy or merely wanting to emulate a successful finisher in Dhoni after being inspired from his leadership, Pandya seems to be intransigent in his methodology even at the cost of failing in what is considered to be a crucial batting position in white-ball cricket.
Hardik Pandya Finishes Innings In Tarouba ODI Like MS Dhoni
Coming in to bat at No. 5 in the 32nd over, Pandya was expected to bat like the likes of Ishan Kishan (77), Shubman Gill (85) and Sanju Samson (51) – all of whom scored individual half-centuries at a healthy strike rate.
Contrary to popular expectations, the right-handed batter scoring 14 (26) at a point in time sucked all momentum out of the Indian innings. With Gill, Pandya and Suryakumar Yadav (35) scoring just 23 runs between 33-40 overs, the visitors didn’t make most of the phase before the third powerplay.
Pandya, who had played the most of the deliveries in these eight overs, hit two fours and a six across the next seven overs. However, much like Dhoni, Pandya used the long handle effectively in the last three overs on the back of hitting a four and four sixes to bring up his 10th ODI half-century.
With the 29-year old player returning unbeaten on 70* (52), his strike rate of 134.61 was better than each one of the above mentioned players. That being said, what Pandya and the team management need to decide is if they are content with this strike rate and an innings total of 351/5 when there was a clear-cut opportunity of scoring in vicinity of the 400-run mark.
As far as Dhoni is concerned, he had an uncanny tendency of sealing run-chases in spite of unnecessarily taking them all the way down to the wire. For Pandya to match Dhoni’s insane success rate in this particular aspect, he will have to be way more consistent than what he is at the moment.
Hardik Pandya Had Once Hesitated From Filling MS Dhoni’s Shoes
There is no going into a safe house around the fact that Pandya was always touted as a potential replacement for Dhoni for the finisher’s role. Pandya, who has mostly refrained from accepting the finisher’s tag in front of the media, had once even hesitated from filling Dhoni’s shoes in the Indian cricket team.
“I’ll never be able to fill MS’ shoes. So, I don’t even think that way. I’m quite excited for the challenge to be honest. Whatever I do, it will be always for the team you know. It will be one step at the ladder and slowly-slowly that Cup will be there,” Pandya was quoted as saying by India Today a few months before ICC T20 World Cup 2021.
Pandya, whose debuts in both the white-ball formats had come under his beloved Mahi bhai, participated in the World Cup held in the UAE a couple of years ago under his mentorship.
