Ireland vs India – “Not Instinctive, I Like To Be More Practical”: Hardik Pandya On His Captaincy Style

Hardik Pandya had a great run for the Gujarat Titans in IPL 2022 as he led the debutants to the title win and his captaincy impressed one and all. Now, the 28-year-old all-rounder has been given the opportunity to lead Team India in the upcoming two-match T20I series against Ireland, beginning Sunday. It would be interesting to see how Hardik uses the resources at display and what sort of leadership skills he displays.

Before the recently-concluded series against South Africa, Hardik had last played for Team India in 2021 T20 World Cup in UAE. Hardik attended a virtual press conference on Saturday where he spoke about his captaincy style and the upcoming series against Ireland.

“Obviously, I have taken a lot of things from them (MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli) but mainly, I wanted to be my own self. My understanding of the game is in a different way, for me, I have taken a lot of good points from them but at the same time, I wanted to be natural and kind of, not be instinctive, I see more (the) situation than I can go with my gut. It is about what the team requires in that point of time, what kind of decision I can take at that point, I focus more on that rather than thinking my gut is saying that, I am going to go there. When you go on gut, it is always 50-50, but I do not believe in that, I like to be practical and I like to see the situation,” said Hardik while replying to an NDTV question during a virtual press conference.

When asked about his journey in the past few months, Hardik said: “Obviously, I have always been looking to play some good quality cricket. Describing is difficult, it is just the hard work I have put, getting little outcomes from that.”

“The talent in the Indian team, they have shown great character and the way we played, it shows the bench strength we have. If something happens to any player, then the backup will always be ready. We have so many options, players are still fighting for their spots, they talk about knocking the door, players are getting in after banging the door down. There can be nothing better than that,” he added.

Further talking about his own game, the all-rounder said: “Earlier also I liked taking the responsibility. Now also, I like it, perhaps a little more now. I think that I have always done better when I have taken the responsibility. When you take your own decisions, it makes you stronger. I will try the same reflects in my captaincy, how I give confidence to players and how I tell them all to keep fighting.”

In the last series against South Africa, Hardik Pandya had scored 117 runs and he was not able to take a single wicket with the ball in hand.

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In IPL 2022, Hardik had scored 487 runs with the bat and he also managed to take eight wickets, out of which three came in the final against Rajasthan Royals.

India squad for Ireland T20I series: Hardik Pandya (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (vc), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi, Deepak Hooda, Venkatesh Iyer, Axar Patel, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Avesh Khan, Harshal Patel, Umran Malik, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi.