Hardik Pandya emerged as the best candidate to lead the Indian team in the shortest format of the game after he led his IPL team Gujarat Titans to the title win in their debut season. Though Rohit Sharma has always maintained that he hasn’t quit the T20I format, it seems that the selectors have made up their minds that the time of Rohit and Virat Kohli is over in the T20I format and now only youngsters will get to play in T20Is.
The Indian team performed well under Hardik Pandya’s captaincy initially but in the ongoing 5-match T20I series, Pandya is slammed not only for his poor decisions on the field but also for the experimentation done in the batting order. Why is Hardik Pandya, who is very successful in the IPL as skipper, not able to repeat his success at the international level?
If we go by the views of former Indian cricketer Parthiv Patel, then the reason behind Hardik’s failure is that he is not getting the support from Indian head coach Rahul Dravid which he got from the head coach of GT, Ashish Nehra.
During an interview, Parthiv Patel stated, “There have been a couple of instances about Hardik Pandya’s captaincy which have been glaring mistakes. The first was giving that over to Axar Patel in the first game when Nicholas Pooran had come out to bat. And today, this one. Hardik Pandya the captain has been brilliant with GT but at Gujarat Titans he had that support of Ashish Nehra. But is Rahul Dravid that proactive coach or person which we are looking for in the T20 format. I don’t think so. In my mind, we need someone who is proactive. Hardik Pandya has that spark but he needs that support, which to me Rahul Dravid doesn’t provide.”
Do you agree with Parthiv Patel?
