It is very much clear by now that Hardik Pandya will be leading India’s T20I team in next year’s T20 World Cup 2024 in the West Indies and the USA.
The latest 5-T20I series against the West Indies would have served as a good preparation series. And even though India lost the series 3-2, they certainly will take some positive gains from the loss – Tilak Varma and Yashasvi Jaiswal being the two biggest positives while Suryakumar Yadav continued on his surreal T20 form. Coming from 0-2 down to stretch the series in the decider was a big plus.
The one major drawback from this series for India was Hardik Pandya’s captaincy. Captaining in T20 cricket is often based on gut calls and decisions taken on the field amid changing scenarios and situations more than what could be planned ahead of the game.
Hardik Pandya returned with plenty of criticism and trolling and more questions than answers as his post as the India T20I captain.
He had built his captaincy reputation in the last two IPL seasons, taking Gujarat Titans to two consecutive finals and winning the IPL trophy last year. He had done well as India’s T20I captain in the past year, but this series in the West Indies exposed some of his flaws as the skipper. Clearly West Indies in their home posed the biggest challenge of Hardik Pandya’s India captaincy career so far, wherein he’d won series over Ireland, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand.
Here are two major flaws of Hardik Pandya’s captaincy in West Indies T20I series loss:
His defensive captaincy style when India were bowling
Some of the calls Hardik Pandya made as captain when India were bowling were baffling. He didn’t bowl Axar Patel much in the series, and you wouldn’t be faulted to feel that Axar played moreover as a batting all-rounder than a bowling all-rounder.
Axar was too timid in not bowling Axar whenever Nicholas Pooran, or a left-hander, was on the crease. Yes, Poran likes to take down the left-arm spinners as it is his favored match-up. But by not giving Axar bowling with Pooran on strike, it was a dent to the confidence of Axar and even disrespect to his abilities as a spinner.
Some other aggressive captain might have given Pooran the bait to go after a left-arm spinner like Axar and in that process stood a decent chance that Pooran might get caught out if he mistimes his shot.
Hardik also clearly under-utilized the threats that Mukesh Kumar could make with the new ball, and mostly used him after the 10th over mark and in the death overs. This was shocking because in the Test and ODI series earlier, Mukesh showed how good he was with the new ball and made regular strikes.
Instead, Hardik Pandya himself bowled with the new ball. That ploy backfired as he was smoked for over 20 runs in his first two overs in the 5th T20I, which gave West Indies the momentum in their chase.
At Gujarat Titans he was successful with his calls because of the strong bowling attack – which included Joseph, Rashid, Noor, Shami, Little, and Mohit – in that team; he doesn’t have similar strength and variety of resources in Team India.
Hardik Pandya’s batting and finishing has gone down since he became captain
Hardik Pandya was once one of the most fearsome power-hitters and finishers in white-ball cricket. However, since he took the captaincy duties from last year, he’s trying to turn himself into an anchor batsman – which is not needed when batting at number 5 in T20 cricket. He’s desperately trying to do the Dhoni way: take some balls to assess the conditions and pitch before going hammer and tongs.
But Hardik Pandya doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination or finishing ability and range of MS Dhoni. He clearly can’t hit hard lengths into his body with consistency and is more likely to get caught while pulling to pace on deliveries.
Hardik had built his reputation as a spin destroyer, but now he’s weirdly tapping the spinners around for singles and doubles. The sixes have evidently been missing from Hardik’s batting in the past couple of years, and so has been the intimidating factor.
In the T20I matches that he’s captained India, he has a strike rate of only 124, while in matches not as India’s captain, he had a strike rate of 144. In the IPL, for Mumbai Indians, Hardik had a strike rate of 153 while for Gujarat, he has struck at 133.
