T20 World Cup: It’s time Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya joined the party as India face England in semis

T20 World Cup: It’s time Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya joined the party as India face England in semis

The underwhelming efforts of both Rohit and Hardik have not hurt India, but at some stage, Men in Blue will need a bigger contributions from these two

G UnnikrishnanUpdated: Monday, November 07, 2022, 08:15 PM IST
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India captain Rohit Sharma (R) with Hardik Pandya | Pic: Twitter

Adelaide: Batsman 1: Matches: 5, Runs: 89, Strike-rate: 109.87. 

Batsman 2: Matches: 5, Runs: 65, Strike-rate: 101.56.

Now, guess who these two batsmen are? Before your imagination runs wild, these are the stats of Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya respectively, in the on-going T20 World Cup.

Of course, the underwhelming efforts of both Rohit and Hardik have not really hurt India in the tournament, but at some stage, India will need a bigger contributions from these two. 

Overdependence on Virat, Suryakumar

Now, the Indian batting resemble a twin engine aircraft with Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav doing the bulk of scoring with KL Rahul chipping in the matches against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe with fifties. 

But before that, Rahul's three outings in the World Cup had produced just 22 runs. While it won’t be fancy to downgrade his fifty-making efforts against the minnows, India will be hoping for him to fire against bigger opponents in crunch matches.

High risk

Returning to Rohit and Hardik, The former is one of the finest exponents of pull shots, but he has fallen to that precise shot three times in 5 matches. That shot has produced a couple of sixes too for Rohit, but the risk quotient seemed higher in the massive Australian grounds.

Rohit could not impart power, timing or distance to the shot on those occasions, leading to his dismissals. Apart from one occasion when he made a fifty, Rohit fell in the Powerplay segment robbing India of a strong start. 

Hardik offered almost a similar example towards the backend of the India innings. His finest moment came against Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. 

Hardik came to the crease when India were four down and Virat Kohli was trying to resurrect the innings. Hardik took it upon himself to take that pressure off Kohli's shoulder with some beefy hits early in the innings before ceding the stage to Kohli to do his own magic.

His 37-ball 40 on that was worth its weight in gold, but since then, Hardik has struggled to shift gears and India often had to rely on the 360 degrees ability of Suryakumar Yadav to force the pace. 

Netherlands pacer Paul Van Meekeren’ s words substantiated the fact. “We know how good SKY is. Over the last 12 months, if not longer, he was the biggest threat to bowl to. Just with his open stance, the margin of error was less compared to Kohli, who is a bit more traditional.

Brilliant SKY

“They're very good players in their own right, and Rohit played some unbelievable shots. When I was bowling, I felt the biggest pressure came when I was bowling to SKY. Obviously, if you miss a little bit, he punishes you,” Van Meekeren had said. 

It's difficult to do what Suryakumar does. But now, the tournament has entered its business end, It’s time Rohit and Hardik joined the party. And there is no better occasion than a World Cup semifinal. 

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