On June 7, 2021-23, the World Table Tennis Championship Final will be held between India and Australia at The Oval. Meanwhile, Ricky Ponting believes that Hardik Pandya may be an asset to the Indians if they were to acquire him.
Ricky Ponting, a batting star, believes that India should have included Hardik Pandya in their team for the 2021-23 ICC World Test Championship (WTC) Final against Australia in London. Ponting believes that Pandya’s all-round ability could have been the deciding factor in the one-off match. Pandya has not participated in a Test match since 2018, and he has chosen to avoid the five-day format due to continued worries regarding his level of fitness. But Ponting believed that Pandya should have been able to participate in the winner-takes-all match that was held at The Oval from June 7-11. This was partly due to the fact that Pandya bowled in practically every game during the most recent season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the Gujarat Titans (GT), which Ponting captains.
“…the other day I was thinking about how valuable someone like Hardik Pandya may be for India in this game, and it got me thinking about how one-off Test matches work. It is public knowledge that he has stated that playing in test matches is definitely a little bit taxing on his physique. Ponting stated in an article for the ICC Review that “but for a one-off game… he’s been bowling every game through this IPL, and he’s bowling quick.”
According to the ex-captain of Australia, who is currently the head coach of Delhi Capitals (DC) in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Hardik Pandya might have been the X-factor for the Indian squad in the World T20 Championship Final, which will begin on June 7. “He [Pandya] may be the X-factor to pick in a game that only involves the two of you. Come on in and watch him play some baseball and see how good he is. “I get the feeling that he could be the deciding factor between the two squads,” he said.
Pandya, who is now 29 years old and made his debut in 2017, has participated in 11 Test matches up till this point, accumulating a total of 532 runs at an average of 31.29 with one hundred and four fifties. He has taken 17 wickets while averaging 31.05 runs per wicket. Pandya has played in a total of 74 One-Day Internationals (ODIs), and he has scored 1584 runs while averaging 33.00 and taken 72 wickets. In Twenty20 Internationals, which are abbreviated as T20Is, he has played 87 matches, during which he has scored 1271 runs and taken 69 wickets. In 2022, Pandya guided GT to its first-ever Indian Premier League victory; however, on Monday of this season, the final was won by Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the Chennai Super Kings (CSK).