Team India star all-rounder Hardik Pandya dodged the question about his recent happenings in his personal life as he made his first public appearance after his separation with Natasa Stankovic. Instead, the 30-year-old spoke extensively about physical fitness and how much he has pushed himself over the years.
The Baroda-born cricketer copped plenty of flak during IPL 2024 after replacing Rohit Sharma as the captain of the Mumbai Indians. With widespread criticism hovering, his performances also suffered leading to the five-time champions finishing in the bottom half of the points table. However, he turned his form around in T20 World Cup 2024 and played an integral role in breaking India's 11-year-old ICC trophy drought.
Speaking to Jatin Sapru, Pandya recalled how far he pushed his limits and force his mind to put in that extra effort to get things done.
"When our body does not get tired, our mind gets tired. So, so many times in my life, the difference between when I was able to push my limits was always the fact that when my mind gets tired, I will tell my body to just push because you will always have extra effort in your body. The difference between, if you do 20 and if I do 20, we are on the same level. But if I push to 25 and if I challenge my mindset, next time I'm going to do 25, next time I'm going to do 30."
"Very, very important to sometime clean your mind" - Hardik Pandya
The seam-bowling all-rounder added that he has also always gone beyond the trainer's expectations, claiming:
"The point that it is very, very important to sometime clean your mind as well, that your body has much more than what you can think and that video (he watched as a 16-year-old) stayed with me for so long that, every time in my life, when my trainer is telling me to do 10 push-ups, I've always ended up doing 15."
Pandya will be in action during the upcoming T20I series against Sri Lanka, starting on July 27th.
