Team India all-rounder Hardik Pandya has never-ending belief in his ability and the facial gesture towards Dinesh Karthik before he smacked Mohammad Nawaz for the match-winning six just showed the level of confidence he has since his return to competitive cricket in IPL 2022.
Pandya wasn’t afraid of the number of runs left, the number of fielders outside the inner ring, he knew what he had to do and he did it, as simple as that. The equation too wasn’t challenging as India needed 7 runs off the final over which Hardik would have scored in his sleep. Hardik made things easy for himself and Ravindra Jadeja in the final over as he smashed Haris Rauf for three fours in the penultimate over.
The equation became slightly tricky when India scored just one run off the first three deliveries and had lost the set batter Jadeja. But, Hardik knew he just needed one delivery to seal the deal and that’s what he did.
Speaking to Jadeja in the video shared by BCCI after the 5-wicket win against the arch-rivals, Hardik said that he knew that equation was easy and not five, even if there were 10 fielders it wouldn’t have mattered as he had to go out of the ground.
“Saath run mujhe kuch jyada badhe lag nahi rahe they, kyunki left arm spinner hain. Aur paanch fielder baahar the ussey mujhe kuch farak nahi padh raha tha. Kyunki paanch kya agar dus fielder hote, dus fielder bahar hote, mereko toh maarna hi tha toh mujhe usse farak nahi pad raha tha (Seven runs didn’t look like daunting to me because a left arm spinner was on. And Pakistan had five fielders on the fence, but even if they had ten, or ten outside, I had to hit out of the ground, so that didn’t matter to me),” said Pandya.
However, Pandya did mention that after Jadeja got out that was the only moment where he showed his emotion but the way Nawaz changed his fielder he was expecting a back of a length delivery.
Pure inning maine ek hi baar emotion dikhaya, jab aap out huye. Par generally bataun toh pressure nahi tha. Mere hisab se usko zyada pressure tha, main woh count kar raha tha ki woh ek mistake karein. Aap pressure ko jis tarike se handle kar sake tabhi aap execution kar sakte hain. Mujhe pata tha ki jis tarike se usne fielder ko thoda idhar kiya hai voh back of length pe jaayega aur maine maar diya. (The emotions came out only on one occasion throughout the innings, when you were dismissed. But in general I didn’t feel much pressure, in fact I felt the bowler was under pressure, so I was waiting for an opportunity where he makes a mistake. How you handle that pressure matters in your execution and I knew Nawaz was going to bowl a back-of-a-length delivery the way he changed his field and I hit it),” Pandya further added.
