India's T20I stand-in captain Hardik Pandya credited his coach at the IPL franchise Gujarat Titans (GT), Ashish Nehra for enhancing and polishing his captaincy during his time in IPL 2022, where he led the franchise to the title last year.
Ahead of the IPL 2022 auction, Hardik Pandya was released by Mumbai Indians (MI) and was gobbled up before the auction happened by new franchise Gujarat Titans (GT), who were debuting in the Indian Premier League. They had made Ashish Nehra their head coach and Gary Kirsten as their batting coach.
Pandya made his competitive cricket comeback in IPL 2022 after a lengthy layoff for fitness reasons.
“What has been very important from Gujarat's point of view is the kind of coach I worked with. Ashish Nehra made a big difference in my life, because of our mindsets. We might be two different personalities, but we have very similar cricketing thoughts,” Pandya said after leading India to a 2-1 series win over Sri Lanka on Saturday.
“Because I was with him, it added value to my captaincy. It helped me to get exactly what I know. It was just about getting that assurance, once I got that… the awareness of this game I always knew. It was all about knowing and backing what I knew already. It has definitely helped me,” he added.
Prior to this series, Pandya had led India’s T20I side whenever Rohit was unavailable, namely in Ireland and New Zealand.
“I’ve never led in junior cricket as well. When I was under-16 I led Baroda. After that everyone thought that I should focus on my game. Since then, I’ve not led (a side),” Pandya added.
(PTI inputs)
