Michael Holding questions Hardik Pandya's place in the Indian team

While there was a debate on whether the Indian team should go in with two spinners and who should it be no one questioned Hardik Pandya’s place in the Indian XI. He was groomed as the seam-bowling allrounder that will be an asset to the team for overseas Test. But skipper Virat Kohli used him for just 10 overs in the 1st Test at Edgbaston. With the bat, Pandya scored 31 runs in the 2nd innings but couldn’t do the job convincingly. That has prompted Windie legend Michael Holding to question his spot in the team.

To accommodate KL Rahul in the batting line-up Kohli opted to drop Cheteshwar Pujara. At the end of the Test match their batting line-up proved too thin to prevail through the test English bowlers put them through. All the four specialist bowlers – three seamers and Ravichandran Ashwin delivered for the team and they didn’t need Pandya’s services with the ball. Thus Holding thinks instead of pushing ahead with the allrounder Team India can play a pure batsman instead.

He wasn’t happy with the decision to drop Pujara as the legend thinks he is too good a batter to be out of the team. The likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Rahul and Ajinkya Rahane all failed against the English seamers whereas Pujara has the reputation of being the one who can see through the tough phase.

Pick a batsman instead

All Team India needed was for someone to support Kohli who single-handedly kept them in the hunt scoring 200 runs in the match. The No.1 ranked team has quite a few questions to answer before the 2nd Test at Lord’s one of which certainly is the combination they want to move forward with.

“Pandya, it seems as if he’s the golden boy in this team. Everyone thinks he’s going to be the next Kapil Dev. He hasn’t shown that yet. Why not pick a batsman (instead)? Pandya got a few runs in the second innings but is he a better batsman than Pujara? I don’t think so, and you don’t need him as a bowler in my eyes,” Holding said.

Overall in his 8-Test career, Pandya has bowled 102 overs and picked up 7 wickets at an average of 46.71 whereas he has bowled most of it outside India. He has featured in three Tests in Sri Lanka (bowled 32 overs) and South Africa (bowled 51 overs) respectively, one in India (bowled 9 overs) and England (bowled 10 overs).

As far as his run-making ability is concerned, the 24-year-old has scored 421 runs at an average of 35 – 108 of those came in Sri Lanka, 93 after playing 3 matches in South Africa, 71 vs Afghanistan at home and 31 in the first Test against England.

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