India all-rounder Hardik Pandya stayed mum on matters that kept him in limelight in recent times as he made a public appearance in Mumbai on Saturday (July 20).
Two days ago, Hardik and Natasa Stankovic confirmed their divorce with a social media post and he lost out to Suryakumar Yadav in the race to become the Indian T20I captain for the upcoming Sri Lanka tour.
Despite the setbacks, Hardik Pandya sported a pleasant smile and spoke at length on fitness while launching his sports apparel brand.
"When our body does not get tired, our mind gets tired. So, so many times in my life, the difference between when I was able to push my limits was always the fact that when my mind gets tired, I will tell my body to just push because you will always have extra effort in your body," Hardik said, as quoted by PTI.
"The difference between, if you do 20 and if I do 20, we are on the same level. But if I push to 25 and if I challenge my mindset, next time I'm going to do 25, next time I'm going to do 30," he added.
During the IPL 2024 season, Hardik Pandya was at the receiving end of fans' wrath for replacing Rohit as Mumbai Indians (MI) captain but he did not react until he turned it around for himself.
However, Pandya won over the fans again as he played a key role in India’s T20 World Cup 2024 triumph last month.
"The point that it is very, very important to sometime clean your mind as well, that your body has much more than what you can think and that video (he watched as a 16-year-old) stayed with me for so long that, every time in my life, when my trainer is telling me to do 10 push-ups, I've always ended up doing 15," the 30-year-old remarked.
"And that has pushed my limits and I think slowly, everyone who wants to start with a fitness journey they should focus on that," said Pandya, adding that his highest score in the Yo-Yo test has been 21.7, only a few notches lesser than the upper limit.
"Start pushing your barrier every single day because the human body is such a lovely creation by god that it will mould however you want (it) to, however you want to have it, it's just that it just needs little hard work," Pandya said.
Ironically, Hardik Pandya was not handed the T20I captaincy due to concerns around his fitness. He has not played Test cricket since August 2018 and has not been able to bowl extensively in white-ball cricket, especially in ODIs.
"I never knew what fitness would do to me, but it's just that I felt it that for me I always wanted to be No. 1 in everything which I do, so in a habit of that, I kept training a lot when I was young, I pushed myself a lot, ran a lot so I had a very good strong base," Hardik said.
"Obviously, there was not much knowledge about the body, not much knowledge about how to increase my fitness, but because my base was strong and I did the basics which you are supposed to do while training, it helped me when I came to the higher level."
"I used to bowl if I'm not wrong 130s; higher 130s, I was able to go 140 plus, 142 by pushing, that's when I realised by 2017 or not as soon as I started getting more more into my body, more knowledge about it and that's when I start pushing," he concluded.
(With PTI Inputs)
