Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Motta bhai, aka Hardik Pandya once again showed why he is going to be key man for India in the coming T20 World Cup happening in less than 100 days in Australia by first picking 4 crucial wickets and then scoring a match winning 71 runs of 55 balls.
He picked up the big wickets of Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, Jose Buttler and Liam Livingstone for just 24 runs and getting crucial wickets for India when it mattered. Most of the wickets he got was bouncing out all the four batsman and playing with the egos of the English players. All English players played in to the hands of Hardik Pandya and wanted to go after Hardik Pandya and paid the price by giving their wickets to Pandya who persisted with short ball inspite of going for some runs but in the end got the better of them.
And when India were chasing 259 runs and once again lost their top order of Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav and were tottering at 81/4 and were staring at defeat, he counter attacked the English bowlers putting on a partnership of 133 Rishab Pant before he got carried away and one shot too many and lost his wicket to the short ball which was his strength in bowling to a brilliant catch by Ben Stokes.
No doubt Rishab Pant was equally important in India pulling of the chase with a magnificent hundred, Hardik Pandya’s all-round performance helped India pulling off the ODI series against England. Motta bhai once again proved like in the IPL that he is India's X factor and the future captain of team India.
