IPL 2022: Season of reckoning for skipper Hardik Pandya

To revive India hopes, the Gujarat Titans leader will need to be an all-rounder

If Hardik Pandya wasn’t a seam bowling all-rounder – an elusive commodity in Indian cricket’s landscape– his quest for relevance may have been a lost battle by now. That there is still hope pinned on Pandya eventually stringing the jigsaw pieces together is because he brings a set of all-round skills the India team is always on the lookout for.

Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya  (Twitter/hardikpandya7)

Not much has gone right for Pandya over the past six months. He was axed from India’s limited-over teams after their early exit from the T20 World Cup in November, demoted from Grade A to C in BCCI’s central contracts list and released by Mumbai Indians after they had invested a lot of time and money in harnessing his potential.

And yet, he’s been handed the responsibility of captaining a new IPL franchise in Gujarat Titans. He was chosen as their first pick in the window given to select three players before the mega auction in February. After all, Pandya can still lay claim to being one of the most explosive finishers in world cricket currently, aside from being a gun fielder and a handy medium-pacer. The second and third choices were Rashid Khan and Shubman Gill.

Any talk about Pandya’s utility as a bowler must come with a caveat for he has seldom bowled over the past couple of years owing to a back injury that surfaced in 2018. He didn’t roll his arm over in IPL 2021 and delivered just four overs in five games in the T20 World Cup, despite chief selector Chetan Sharma’s assertion in the lead-up to the event that he was fit enough to bowl in all games.

Since then, the selectors seem to have learned their lesson. In February, while picking the squad for the series against Sri Lanka, Sharma made it clear that Pandya will not be picked for the national team again until he proves that he can bowl at full tilt.

We will know only when the IPL begins whether Pandya’s bowling is up to speed or not. But for now, Pandya is sending out all the right messages.

“I’ve always been someone who has given all three areas – batting, bowling and fielding – importance,” he said at his unveiling as Gujarat Titans’ captain last month. “I’ve realised one thing that I as an all-rounder give a lot of different options to the team. I want to play as an all-rounder, and I’ll always try to do that. If something does go wrong, my batting is always there. And you know, Hardik Pandya with bat and ball combined sounds better than just a batter.”

While his batting is unmistakably his stronger suit, it’s not been all smooth sailing on that front either. A glance at his IPL numbers reflects that 2021 was his second-worst season– his poorest returns were in 2016– with the bat since making his debut in 2015. In 12 matches, he registered 127 runs at an average of 14.11 and, worryingly, a strike rate of 113.39.

Certainly not what you would want from your premier finisher. It made Mumbai’s decision far easier than it would have been had he continued producing the big hits towards the back-end of an innings. He didn’t bowl for Mumbai in IPL 2020 either but was doing more than enough to merit a place in the side as a batter alone.

Pandya has a point to prove but will captaincy of Gujarat Titans spur him on or be an additional burden? Consider that he has captained at the senior level only once earlier – in a tour game against Australia in 2017.

The lack of experience doesn’t seem to bother him. “I don’t think there is a manual to learn how to become a captain,” Pandya said. “But I’ve always been a guy who likes to take up responsibilities in whichever games I have played. I’ll make sure that all the boys who are with me play as a unit. My doors will be always open for them. So no preparation as such but I’m looking forward to it and mentally I have always been ready.”

For captaincy to run smoothly, Pandya will know that he has to justify his innate confidence and swagger – which is manifested in his funky hairstyles, inked body and love for bling jewellery – with runs and wickets. If he manages to do that, it will not only help Gujarat Titans over the next two months but also benefit Indian cricket in the long run.