Hardik Pandya, India’s all-rounder on Saturday said that in the T20I series against England the Indian side wanted to try out different things including breaking the jinx of batting first and winning.
Indian bowlers restricted England to 188/8 in their allotted 20 overs to register a 36-run win in the fifth T20I here at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Saturday.
Hardik Pandya Working On Fine-Tuning His Action
At one stage, England was on-course for registering a win as Jos Buttler and Dawid Malan put on 130 runs for the second wicket, but as soon as the duo lost their wickets, the visitors lost their way and ended up losing the match.
“I have been working on fine-tuning my action, but at the end of the day, you are thinking of what kind of delivery you want to bowl. It’s slightly difficult but I am coping really well. When I bat I think as a batsman and when I bowl I think as a bowler. “
“Looking at the World Cup, in this series we wanted to try out a few things and also to break the jinx of batting first and winning, feels really great. The wicket allowed us to use more variations and make sure that the batsmen are not getting anything in their zone,” Pandya said at the post-match presentation.
Earlier, skipper Virat Kohli’s decision to promote himself as an opener worked wonders in the fifth and final T20I against England as India posted a total of 224/2. Virat Kohli played a knock of 80 runs while Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav played knocks of 64 and 32 respectively as the hosts posted a mammoth total on the board.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar And Shardul Thakur Stars Again With Ball To Restrict England To 188/8
However, the telling blow, in the end, came from Hardik Pandya as the swashbuckling all-rounder played an innings of 39 runs off just 17 balls and stayed unbeaten.
Later, he returned with figures of 1/34 as the pace duo of Bhuvneshwar Kumar(2/15) and Shardul Thakur(3/45) wreaked havoc in England innings to restrict the team to 188/8 despite the fact that at one stage, England was well placed at 130/1 in the 13th over. They managed only 58 runs in the next 7 overs losing 7 more wickets.
Hardik Pandya has played as a specialist batsman more often than not, including in the last IPL. Hardik Pandya bowled in the 2nd ODI against and in Australia where he had figures of 1/24 in 4 overs where other bowlers went for plenty. He hasn’t bowled much following his back surgery in 2019.
Hardik Pandya was arguably one of India’s standout performers in the limited-overs leg against Australia. He hit 2 scores in the 90s in India’s otherwise poor performance in the ODIs where the team suffered a 2-1 loss. In the subsequent T20Is that followed, he scored 78 runs in three innings at an average of 39 and at a strike-rate of 156.00 which helped India chase down targets when odds were stacked against the team.
Hardik Pandya scored 86 runs averaging 28.67 and bowled 17 overs picking 3 scalps averaging 39.33 in the 55 T20Is against England.