Virender Sehwag says there is no one in the Indian team who can match Hardik Pandya talentwise

Hardik Pandya has been one of the most talked about talent ever since he made his splash into the world of cricket via the Indian Premier League. His antics and performances in the T20 tournament have led to bigger and better things for the Baroda-born all-rounder as he is now one of the most important members of the Indian team.

He is a part of the 15-man Indian squad for the ICC World Cup 2019 and Pandya is expected to light the event on fire given his recent form in the just concluded IPL 2019. Pandya slammed 402 runs in 15 innings in the tournament at a strike rate of 191.42 with the highest score of 91, coming against KKR in a chase of 232 runs. He was a big reason why MI continued to win important matches despite the failure of their middle order batsmen.

There is no one closer to Hardik Pandya’s talent with both bat and ball, feels Sehwag

While talking on Cricbuzz Virender Sehwag gave his opinions of Hardik Pandya and how he has made a big comeback after the Koffee With Karan chatshow fiasco. Pandya was banned for several matches and fined INR 20 lakh for his controversial comments on the talk show, where he appeared alongside good friend KL Rahul, who also got the same punishment.

“I was surprised that the issue was blown out of proportion. Pandya and Rahul were already punished when they were called back from the Australia tour. He felt that if the BCCI president was strong, and CoA hadn’t handled this issue, it would have stayed low key. They might have been mentally upset a little on their comeback, as everyone is talking about what they have done and focus is on him,” Sehwag said on the show.

Sehwag went onto praise the Mumbai Indians’ allrounder’s performance in the IPL and said that his talent is out of this world and if BCCI had found even one player of his calibre during the time he was out of commission, Pandya wouldn’t have made it back.

“There is no one even closer to Hardik Pandya’s talent with both bat and ball. If there was someone even closer to him, the three-dimensional players picked by BCCI, were even closer to him, Pandya would not have made it back into the team.,” Sehwag further elaborated.

*Clarification: Earlier version of this copy erroneously credited CricketNext as the source which has been updated. We regret the error.

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