‘There’s no doubt about his quality‘: “A player like him is probably just one good inning away from getting back to his natural way.”
Hardik Pandya hasn’t thrown a single ball in the five games he played in the UAE during the 2021 IPL and that could be a problem for India en route to the T20 World Cup.
While Rohit Sharma, Hardik’s captain at Mumbai Indians, said the SUV “is getting better every day,” he added that only medical experts know when Hardik will be able to bowling again.
“The physios, the trainers, the medical team are working on him [Hardik]. As of now, all I know is he hasn’t bowled a single ball yet. We wanted to take one game at a time and see where he stands. You saw he didn’t bowl today as well, but he is getting better day by day. In the next week or so he might be able to bowl, who knows. I mean only the doctors or the physios will be able to give an update on that.” Rohit said after the game against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Last week, Mumbai coach Mahela Jayawardene said pushing Hardik too hard to bowl could also affect his influence. But even without that extra workload.
‘There’s no doubt about his quality’: Hardik had an unforgettable IPL with the racket, scoring just 127 runs with a 14.11 average and a 113.39 hit rate.
‘There’s no doubt about his quality’: However, Rohit endorsed Hardik as a valuable asset to India at the World Cup.
“As far as his batting is concerned, yes, he’ll be a little disappointed, but we know the quality of him. He is a quality player, there is no doubt about that, and he has come back from tough situations before as well. He will not be happy with his batting but the team has confidence in his ability. I personally have confidence in his ability.” Rohit said
“When you look at him, he’s getting better every time that he goes on to the field. A player like him is probably just one good inning away from getting back to his natural way. We’ve seen that he’s done it before as well. If I have to put everything together, I’m personally very confident of his ability and there’s no doubt that he will be a valuable asset.”
Besides Hardik and Rohit, the Mumbai Indians have four other players, Jasprit Bumrah, Rahul Chahar, Suryakumar Yadav, and Ishan Kishan, who are part of the Indian World Cup team. With the exception of Bumrah, the other three did not have a particularly good IPL.
Chahar won just two wickets in four games in the United Arab Emirates. And Kishan and Yadav were also only fit in the later stages.
However, Rohit suggested not using the IPL form as a marker. “Personally, I don’t like to read too much about what happened at the IPL. And what will happen at the T20 World Cup.
The T20 World Cup is a different ball game. If you play franchise cricket, it is different. Therefore, these aspects cannot be compared or examined too closely.
“We had won the trophy here [in the UAE] last year, so the conditions were not alien for us. The thing was the momentum we had created with two back-to-back wins in Delhi. We wanted to continue that but unfortunately because of what was happening in the country. There was a break.” Rohit said.
Regarding this year’s Mumbai campaign. Rohit said the team wanted to pick up speed during the India stage. When the Covid19 pandemic brought the tournament to a standstill.
And while the UAE players couldn’t appear as a unit and the team couldn’t qualify for the playoffs. He prided himself on the fact that they won two consecutive titles in 2019 and 2020.
“When you want to win games, championships, everyone needs to come together. And that is what we had been doing successfully in the last few years. That’s the hallmark of this team, to come collectively and perform. We don’t tend to rely on one or two individuals. We always believe in everyone coming together and chipping in with those performances. That didn’t happen this year. So that was a bit disappointing. But I don’t want to take anything away from the guys, we’ve had two successful campaigns back-to-back. This wasn’t our year.” Rohit Sharma
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