Hardik Pandya missing from Indian squad: The star all-rounder has not been included for the upcoming tour of West Indies.
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India all-rounder Hardik Pandya has not been included in the Indian team across formats for the imminent tour of West Indies. Usually a regular for India in all the three formats, Pandya’s omission has created a lot of queries.
The 25-year all-rounder was impressive across departments in the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. In nine ODIs, Pandya scored 226 runs at an average of 32.28 and a strike rate of 112.43. With the ball in hand, Pandya dismissed 10 batsmen at an average of 44.70, an economy rate of 5.65 and a strike rate of 47.4.
Hardik Pandya missing from Indian squad
It was chief selector MSK Prasad who disclosed the reason behind Pandya’s exit from the Indian squad. “Prithvi [Shaw] is not available, Hardik [Pandya] is also being put through a certain programme. He is not available [for the tour],” Prasad was quoted as saying.
It is worth mentioning that Pandya has missed a lot of cricket in the last year due to injuries. Starting from the Asia Cup, Pandya went on to miss the home series against West Indies. While he couldn’t regain fitness for the Australia Tests last year, a fresh injury saw him missing the home series against Australia before the Indian Premier League this year.
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Prasad further spoke on the lines of managing workloads of Indian cricketers in coordination with feedback received from the team management. “There’s some workload management programme.
“We have an itinerary for a couple of years, and looking at that itinerary, the team management – which includes the trainer, the physio, and the coach and captain – sits and works on the workload management of the players. So prior to the selection of any team, they give us the list and based on that we go ahead with the selection,” Prasad added.
