Hardik Pandya pulled off a stellar all-round performance for Mumbai Indians in their last night's IPL 2019 encounter against Chennai Super Kings and earned praise even from the opposition camp, where head coach Stephen Fleming was left in awe of the highly talented youngster.
He smashed away an unbeaten 25 off just 8 balls to push Mumbai's first innings total to 170/5 in 20 overs when they could well have finished 20 runs short without the flurry of boundaries which Pandya's late blitz provided.
The 25-year-old later picked up three wickets in a very fine spell of 3/20 off his four overs. He helped his team restrict Chennai to just 133/8 and clinch an amazing 37-run victory - Mumbai's second in this IPL season so far. Hardik was then rightfully awarded "Player-of-the-Match" for his magnificent effort on the night.
"I am a massive fan (of Pandya), I think he is a wonderful player," said Fleming at the post-match press conference on Wednesday (April 3). "His confidence is up, looks like he has a good thing going with what he is doing at the death. Plans should be now for teams to combat that. We were happy with what we were trying to do but executed it poorly."
"He is a quality player. I think he is one of Mumbai’s key weapons and one of India’s key players going forward. If you keep him out of the game you often go on to win. But today with both bat and ball he was excellent."
Despite chasing a 171-run target, CSK were expected to win, and hence Fleming was quite disappointed after an insipid performance with the bat from his unit. Shane Watson (5), Ambati Rayudu (0), Suresh Raina (16) and even skipper MS Dhoni (12) failed, while Kedar Jadhav (58) fought the lone battle. Chennai's bowling also looked quite thin against Mumbai.
"Over the last 5-6 overs we came a little bit unstuck," Fleming added. "We had an extra seamer. In the last, three or four overs, the game got away from us. We had been keeping things simple but today it got a bit complicated. It was a tough ask."
"In bowling, we were tight for the first 2/3rds but not in the last 1/3rd. A score of 150 would have been par for the course."
The ongoing IPL season has come under widespread criticism for the slow over-rates which have been observed, Fleming also agreed that a T20 game shall never extend for four hours as it did even last night.
"I think it is going to call for a collective effort to speed up things," he said. "Moisture (because of dew) plays its part. Wiping the ball is a consideration. Cricket, in general, is played at a pace below what it needs to be."
"Cricket needs to be speeded up in all forms of the game. If it puts pressure on captains and bowlers, so be it. We need to ask captains and bowlers to be a little bit surer in their plans," Fleming concluded.
(Inputs from The Indian Express)
