As Team India attempts to rebuild following a poor T20 World Cup campaign in 2022, former India head coach Ravi Shastri spoke extensively about Hardik Pandya as their permanent T20I captain.
Hardik has captained India in all eight T20I games since their semi-final T20 World Cup loss to eventual champions England, winning five of them while losing two. This includes victories both at home and away against Sri Lanka and against New Zealand.
Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Ravi Shastri voiced his opinion on if India should announce Hardik as the permanent captain.
“He is already captain of India in T20s, so he will continue, unless he is not fit. Now I feel they’ll go the 2007 route where they’ll identify talent and he’ll have a big choice when it comes to selection because his ideas will be different, he will have played the IPL as a captain of a franchise and seen a lot of the other players,” Shastri said.
Shastri also spoke about Hardik’s willingness to take accountability as captain.
“He is supremely confident about his own ability. The fact that he is fully fit now makes a massive difference. He’s the guy who’s going to take the guys on to the park, so whatever he says has to be given importance and listened to,” he added.
Hardik Pandya led the Gujarat Titans (GT) to the IPL title in their debut season in 2022 and the team are currently table-toppers in IPL 2023. The next T20 World Cup will be played in the West Indies and the United States in June 2024.
It’s Not That He Is Playing Three Formats: Shastri On Hardik Pandya’s Workload
In addition, Ravi Shastri disagreed with the idea of controlling Hardik Pandya’s workload, pointing out that the 29-year-old does not play in all formats. In India’s tour of England in 2018, over five years have passed since Hardik last played in a test match.
“Not really, because October is the World Cup, they don’t play any cricket after the IPL, probably 4 or 5 matches he’ll play before the World Cup, it’s not that he is playing three formats. Everything now is separate, you have test matches, the moment a test series comes, he gets a corridor of a month to rest,” Shastri said.
He also spoke on Team India heading towards a new direction in T20 cricket with the 2024 World Cup in mind.
“I think they will, T20 coming up, lot of talent amongst the youth at the moment, you might have a new team, there will be new faces not a new team because what we’ve seen here in this year’s IPL there’s some refreshing young talent,” he said.
Ravi Shastri’s tenure as India’s head coach ended with the team failing to reach the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup in 2021.