South African cricketer David Miller praised Hardik Pandya for his exceptional leadership abilities. Miller said that Pandya is a natural leader who can turn India’s T20I team into a fearless side with his exemplary clarity of mind and work ethic.
Notably, South Africa's hard-hitting batter played under Pandya for the Gujarat Titans in the IPL 2022, where the Indian all-rounder captained the franchise to the title in its debut season.
Pandya has since then led Team India to T20I series wins in Ireland and New Zealand and has been touted as the next T20I captain by many former cricketers and cricket experts.
As reported by PTI, David Miller said on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi T10 League: “Pandya is a natural leader. He allows you to play the way that you feel like you can and had played a crucial role in steering Gujarat Titans to the title on their IPL debut.”
The Proteas batter continued, “Just playing under him in the IPL, I feel he is very inclusive as a leader, he wants everyone to be close to each other. At the same time, he is clear with his discipline. He has got a lot of good attributes of a leader. In IPL he got better and better as the season progressed and I see him doing that (with the Indian team as well).”
Meanwhile, Pandya also reacted to the views of Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri over India’s captaincy in the shorter format of the game. He had said: “If people are saying, you feel good about it but till something happens (official announcement), you can't say.”
Pandya signed off by saying, “To be honest, my thing is simple, if I do one match or one series, I will lead the team my way, how I see and perceive the game. Whenever I am given the opportunity, I will always go out and play the brand of cricket I know. As a unit, we will display my brand. As far as whatever (captaincy) comes in future, we will see.”
(With PTI Inputs)
