At Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday, Hardik Pandya simultaneously emerged as India’s biggest positive as well as a possible contributor to t...
At Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday, Hardik Pandya simultaneously emerged as India’s biggest positive as well as a possible contributor to the opening One Day International defeat against Australia.
With a career-best ODI score of 90, Pandya played an impressive innings on his return to the ODI side after the World Cup in 2019. But, in the analysis of the result, Virat Kohli found an answer to one question that India were faced with before the match while there was another that proved elusive.
Question answered
Pandya, walking in to bat at 101/4 in the 14th over, stayed in the middle till 247/6 in the 39th over. In the process, the 27-year-old faced 76 balls for his brilliant 90, which included seven fours and four sixes.
When the playing XI was confirmed by Kohli at the toss the question that was on many a lip was whether Hardik Pandya is a good option as a specialist batsman in the Indian side. Was he good enough to pip the likes of Shubman Gill or Manish Pandey, just on his batting skills, if he was not going to bowl?
Going by the evidence of what we witnessed during the course of the Indian Premier League and on the day at SCG in the...
