Hardik Pandya in action during the India vs South Africa 3rd T20I.© AFP
Hardik Pandya has struggled to get going with the bat during India’s T20I series tour against South Africa so far. The third T20I, held at Centurion, saw Pandya dismissed leg-before-wicket (LBW) by Keshav Maharaj for 18 runs off 16 balls. However, while Pandya had reviewed the umpire’s decision, he decided to walk off the field of play even before the review had been completed. Seeing that he had not gotten any bat on it and had been caught plumb in front of the wicket, Pandya decided to walk back even before ball tracking began.
As it turned out, Pandya was indeed out LBW, with hawk-eye showing that the ball would’ve hit the wickets.
Pandya’s dismissal brought an end to another underwhelming knock in the T20I series. The all-rounder was dismissed for only two runs in the first T20I. In the second, Pandya was forced to play with the tailenders after the middle order had collapsed. As a result, he faced as many as 45 balls, but could only score 39.
The third T20I took Pandya’s tally in the four-match series to 59 runs off 67 balls.
Despite Pandya’s failure with the bat, India rode on the back of Tilak Varma‘s sensational century to post a total of 219. Ultimately, India ended up winning the game by 11 runs. Pandya gave away 50 runs with the ball – including 24 runs in an over from Marco Jansen – but picked up the wicket of David Miller.
Pandya has one more T20I to improve his record for the series.
The all-rounder is also the captain of Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Mumbai Indians (MI), who will head into the IPL 2025 mega auction with a purse of INR 45 crore, having retained five senior India players, in the form of Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma and Tilak Varma.
The IPL 2025 mega auction will take place in Jeddah on November 24 and 25.
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