Hardik Pandya’s batting always puts ‘India in a good stead’, skipper Rohit Sharma reiterated the ability of his team’s biggest ‘X-Factor’ in white-ball cricket after his fifty against Bangladesh all but put ‘Men in Blue’ into the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup.
Pandya, who scored the first half-century by an Indian No. 6 in a T20 World Cup game, also took a wicket in the team’s 50-run Super 8s win against Bangladesh at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua’s North Sound on Saturday.
Pandya has so far scored 89 runs in three innings with a strike-rate of 141, besides taking eight wickets.
“I mentioned in the last game as well, his batting well puts us in a good stead. We want to finish well and Hardik being Hardik we know what he is capable of,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
“He is a very important player for us, if he can keep doing that, it will put us in good positions,” said the skipper.
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On the day, Indian batters also showed more intent and there were quickfire 30s from three batters — Virat Kohli (37), Rishabh Pant (36) and Shivam Dube (34). The skipper himself set the tone with 23 off 11 balls.
“I have been talking about this for a long time now. It’s about going there and putting that into work. Considering everything we played really well, adapted to the conditions,” he said.
“All eight batters need to play their role, whatever it is. We saw one guy get 50 and we got 197, in T20 I don’t believe we need to get fifties and hundreds, what matters is the pressure you put on the bowlers.
“All the batters from the word go played well and that’s how we want to play as well. There is a lot of experience in the squad and we back them,” he said about the perfect execution of the game plan.
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He did admit that breeze is a factor in most of the Caribbean islands.
“There’s a little bit of wind factor here, overall we are very smart, overall we were good with bat and ball.”
(With inputs from Agencies)
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