Rajkot: It has been a rather topsy-turvy year for Hardik Pandya, who had to endure the disappointment of being dropped from the national team after the T20 World Cup, earlier this year.
The, 23-year-old has gone on to use his time away from the national team, to improve his game. This hard work has paid the dividends, as recently made his ODI debut, and is now a part of the Indian Test squad.
“I did get an intuition that I will get a call, but at the same time it was a 50-50 kind of a scenario,” said a Pandya to BCCI.tv, after being called-up for the Test squad for the first time.
“I believe in one year itself I have seen my rise and fall. After the T20 World Cup, I had a reality check in those three months when I was out of the team,” said Pandya.
“That gave me a boost and motivation to get back to basics and improve my game. I felt that I needed to improve on my skill set and work on my mentality. I prepared myself physically and mentally in those three months and told myself that I will get back on the field very soon.”
However, being picked for India A’s tour of Australia is something that really helped Pandya get back to form. More specifically, the mental conditioning that he went through, while working under legendary India batsman and India A coach Rahul Dravid, was something that helped him improve.
“The India ‘A’ tour to Australia was a huge learning curve where I could speak to Rahul (Dravid) Sir. There was Paras Mhambrey as well who worked on my bowling. I spoke to both of them often, which cleared my mind. It improved my game and I have become more focussed in my game.
“Those 50 days with Rahul Sir were priceless. I kept asking him about things I needed to do to be a better player and well suited for Test cricket. He just told me one thing - ‘I believe you can play Test cricket provided you become more aware of your game.’ He told me cricket is a situation sport and it was all about reacting and modeling your batting according to the situation.”
According to Dravid, Pandya is more than a lower-order slogger. Pandya says that ‘The Wall’ helped him improve his defence, and conditioned him to refrain from playing the big shots when not required.
“He would always tell me, that people know me for the big shots but I am a much better batsman than just playing big shots. He believed that I had the technique and mental state to stick around for a long innings,” said Pandya.
“I kept those words in mind and the 79-odd runs that I scored against Australia ‘A’ in the second unofficial Test were a testament to it. We were 46/6 and I managed to take the team to a better position. That innings was a confidence booster for me which brought in me the belief that if I stuck around for some time, I could definitely go all the way and score big.”
