Hardik has turned his career around: Dravid
Vijayawada, India - Hardik Pandya has "turned his career around" by playing situations smartly, according to India A coach Rahul Dravid. It's a template he hopes players from the current India A set-up emulate.
Last year, Dravid was Pandya's coach on an India A tour of Australia, where the allrounder first showed signs of being able to temper his naturally free-stroking approach when the situation demanded it.
Since then, Pandya has continued to demonstrate this adaptability, most recently in the ongoing ODI series against Australia, where he has scored two match-winning half-centuries of varying moods.
In the first ODI, he revived a floundering innings with M S Dhoni before launching into Australia's spinners to make a match-turning 83. In Indore on Sunday, he was sent up to No 4 after the openers put on a century stand in a chase of 294. Pandya sustained the tempo while scoring 78, and fell with India only ten short of its target.
"A good example about Hardik from my perspective is, he's willing to play situations and not just the natural game we often speak about. Credit goes completely to him. He's the one who has actually turned his career around." Dravid said on Monday, on the sidelines of India A's unofficial Test against New Zealand A in Vijayawada.
"It's not about playing just the one way you want to play.
"If he bats at four, he bats in a particular way. If he bats at six, he bats in a particular way. Tomorrow, he may bat at 80 for four, like he did in the first ODI with Dhoni. That shows maturity and that's what you want to see. This concept of 'play your natural game', which I hear all the time, frustrates me because there's no such thing in my belief as 'natural game.'
"It's only about how you play different situations. Are you good enough to play when the score is 30 for three, or 250 for three?
“Are you good enough to bat when you go in first over or are you good enough to go in first ball after lunch? You have to learn to bat differently in different conditions, and if you can do that like Hardik is showing at the moment, those would be signs of a developing cricketer, someone who can make consistent contributions and not someone who is a one-off, who can produce brilliance once in a while.
“The aspiration and challenges set for a lot of India A players is to be all-weather players, all-situation players, all-condition players."
Pandya's coming of age is an example of how exposure to the India U19 and India A teams, which Dravid has coached for over two years now, has helped players to make a smooth transition when called up to the senior team.