Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting reckons India missed a trick by not picking up Hardik Pandya for the World Test Championship Final 2023 against Australia.
The WTC Final 2023 will be played in the English conditions at The Oval, so Ponting feels Hardik Pandya’s all-round seam-bowling faculties would have been invaluable.
Hardik, who recently marched Gujarat Titans to the IPL 2023 final, has not played Test cricket since 2018 and has been on record saying that his body is not fit enough to take regular toll of 5-day cricket, especially bowling wise.
However, Ricky Ponting asserted that for just a one-off Test that is the WTC Final, Pandya would have been an asset for India.
“I thought about the other day for India in this game is how valuable someone like Hardik Pandya could be in a one-off Test match,” Ponting said on the ICC Review podcast.
“I know he is on record saying that the Test match game is probably a little bit hard on his body. But for a one-off game… he’s been bowling every game through this IPL and he’s bowling quick. He (Pandya) could be that X-factor there just to pick in a one-off game, come in and see what he can do with bat and ball. He could be the difference between the two teams.”
Hardik Pandya played 11 Test matches in his career from 2017 to 2018 before opting out of the red-ball format due to his back injury struggles.
In Pandya’s absence, in the past couple of years, India have played Shardul Thakur in overseas Tests to decent results. For the World Test Championship Final, it would perhaps comed down between choosing Thakur as the seam-bowling all-rounder or R Ashwin as the spinning all-rounder.
Here is India’s squad for World Test Championship final: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Ishan Kishan, KS Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Ishan Kishan(WK)
