“I was like ‘Damn'”: How the 2015 IPL title winning amount helped Hardik Pandya pay his family car EMIs

The fifteen successful seasons of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has done immense service to scores of players with respect to improving their financial sustainability. One might have heart aplenty of heart-warming stories of budding players being able to improve their and their family’s living conditions significantly with the amount they earned via the IPL contracts.

Also, a fair number of players have lived up their dreams and continue doing so of making it into team India and representing their country at the highest level via the opportunities presented to them by the league.

One such player is team India’s flamboyant limited Overs allrounder Hardik Pandya, who caught everyone’s attention post his debut season in the year 2015, for the most successful IPL franchise – Mumbai Indians.

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Belonging from a well-to-do family before his playing days, fortune stopped smiling at them at a point in time and they somehow lost everything they had.

Situation had reached a point where he even had to hide his family car for some good couple of years as they did not make enough to even pay the car EMIs on time.

The 2015 IPL title winning amount helped Hardik Pandya pay his family car EMIs

Ahead of the 2015 season of the IPL, Hardik Pandya was roped in by the Mumbai Indians into their squad, and this is where life changed for him dramatically.

In only his debut season, the MI managed to lift the IPL title for the second time in history, and Pandya managed to earn INR 50 Lakhs post the season.

In what seemed like a life-changing amount for him back then, the Gujarat allrounder not only paid-off the entire car EMI, but even managed to buy a new one with the money.

“For two years, we hadn’t paid the EMI on our car. Just because we were smart, we managed to hide the car. We didn’t want the car to go. So anything we earned in those 3 years was supposed to save the car.

“It was just pay the EMIs on the car and get some food on the table. Then God was kind. In my first year at MI we won the IPL and I got a cheque for Rs 50 lakhs. And I was like “Damn”. From there I got the car freed from the bank and bought a new car as well,” remarked Pandya during a chat show in December 2017.