Hardik Pandya has once again proved why he’s Team India’s most important player in T20I cricket. Arguably the best pace-bowling all-rounder in the world, Hardik possesses the ability to win matches with both disciplines, bat and ball.
Anchor, accelerate, and finish – Hardik can do it all. In the India vs South Africa 1st T20I, he did all three in one innings. Entering the middle in the 12th over, the all-rounder had to save the Men in Blue from trouble. Abhishek Sharma, Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma all came and went.
Hardik Pandya’s batting masterclass in Cuttack
The ball was sticking into the surface. As a result, the batters just couldn’t time the ball at all. Apart from Hardik, no other Indian batter who crossed the 10-run mark had a strike rate of over 123. Meanwhile, Hardik finished his innings while striking at 210.71. It was batting from another world.
The score was 78/4 in 11.4 overs when he walked in. By the time the first innings ended, Hardik was unbeaten on 59 from 28 balls, and India finished with 75. A whopping 97 runs were scored from the moment Hardik arrived, and 59 of those came from his bat.
The term ‘anchor’ has been labelled with batters striking slowly, but what Hardik did was anchor the innings. He decided that attack was the best form of defence and smoked two sixes in the 13th over to get some momentum into the innings. Even when Axar Patel was dismissed in the 14th over, he didn’t stop.
Hardik took the fast bowlers to the cleaners. He struck boundaries off Anrich Nortje, Marco Jansen and Lutho Sipamla. With an uppercut/cut in the 19th over to Nortje, he brought up his fifty from just 25 balls. If Hardik hadn’t fired, India may have been restricted to 150, a total that couldn’t have been defended with dew setting in.
