Captaincy snub a punishment Hardik Pandya didn’t deserve: How long can he take heartbreaks with a smile?
For a long time, Hardik Pandya was considered the natural successor to Rohit Sharma as India’s white-ball captain as and when the latter decided to call time on his limited-overs international career.
Now, it appears as if Pandya will need a miracle to add to his tally of 16 Twenty20 Internationals as skipper.
The influential vice-captain during India’s raking charge to the T20 World Cup title in the Americas last month will be just another foot soldier in the larger scheme of things with Ajit Agarkar’s national selection panel placing their faith in Suryakumar Yadav for the three-match series in Sri Lanka later this month as India embark on the post-Rohit phase in the shortest version. In another telling indication that Pandya isn’t quite the flavour of the captaincy season, the vice-captaincy has been conferred on Shubman Gill, who will also be Rohit’s deputy in the three 50-over games to follow. Clearly, while Gill is being groomed for the future, Pandya must reconcile to remaining the star all-rounder, not a small honour in itself but definitely far less than what the ambitious man from Vadodara would have wished for.
How much of a say incoming head coach Gautam Gambhir had in the turn of events is hard to quantify, though it’s unthinkable that the selectors unilaterally made the call, without a healthy and lengthy discussion with Rahul Dravid’s successor. Gambhir is known for his propensity to set emotion aside and push for tough choices, however unpalatable and unpopular they might appear, so it shouldn’t come as a major surprise if he had a significant say in the elevation of Suryakumar to the hot seat with an eye on the next T20 World Cup, on home soil in 2026.
Workload and fitness concerns surrounding Pandya look to have tilted the scales in favour of Suryakumar, who has led the country in seven T20Is, holding a 5-2 winning record. Pandya has missed 33 of India’s 79 20-over engagements since the beginning of 2022, and while he will be an integral cog in the wheel, his constant if unwilling dalliances with injuries preclude the leadership stability required at any level.
Pandya will have good reason to feel hard done by, especially after his stellar show at the World Cup, most notably in the final when he held his nerve under pressure to produce the strikes that dramatically altered the destination of the trophy. His captaincy credentials aren’t under question; in addition to leading India to 10 wins in the 20-over format, he steered Gujarat Titans to the title on their Indian Premier League debut in 2022 and to the final in 2023, before courting disaster in a similar capacity on his return to Mumbai Indians earlier this season after displacing Rohit from the leadership role. He has shown himself to be an innovative, intuitive and inclusive leader with a flair for the unorthodox and implicit faith in his troops, but an uncooperative body which has restricted his Test career to just 11 matches has conspired against him.
How Pandya reacts to this unquestioned setback remains to be seen. It’s almost certain that the decision-makers explained their line of thinking, before making the call to anoint Suryakumar the new leader official. Pandya is intelligent enough to understand where the selectors and the head coach are coming from, and while he might hold a different point of view, he also knows that there is nothing he can do about it. He is only 30, has plenty of cricket ahead of him and is a staunch believer in never saying never, so he might still harbour ambitions of riding back into the captaincy limelight even if his immediate focus must be on his cricket, on building on the wonderful form he showed with bat and ball in the World Cup.
How all of this will affect his stint at Mumbai Indians is also open to question. The mega auction is due ahead of next season and as of now, one isn’t certain who the five-time former champions will retain. If Pandya remains skipper, as is most likely despite the latest developments, and if Mumbai reacquire the services of Suryakumar, it will mean that for the second season in a row, the Indian T20I captain will play under Pandya. That didn’t sour the dynamics between Rohit and Pandya, and it’s fair to say that it will not affect the Suryakumar-Pandya relationship either, though MI would hardly have envisaged this scenario when they replaced Rohit with Pandya, a decision that didn’t sit well with their or Rohit’s vast legion of fans.
Pandya has battled, and overcome, numerous adversities in his eight and a half years as an international cricketer. It shouldn’t be too different this time either.