Irfan Pathan Expresses his Concern Over the 'Hitting Ability' of Hardik Pandya in T20 Formats

At the end of April, the Indian cricket team will select its preliminary squad for the T20 World Cup 2024. Undoubtedly, even though certain players are locked to start, their performance in the IPL 2024 shows a likely picture of how they will perform in the T20 World Cup. In light of this, there have been significant worries regarding the form of Hardik Pandya as he has not shown any miraculous performance during the first four weeks of the IPL 2024. Pandya is practically a must-have as the country's top all-round player in formats like T20s.

Hardik's stats are bit worrisome

The Mumbai Indians captain's performance in the IPL 2024 has been far from adequate, though. Pandya's strike rate is 142.45, although he has only scored 151 in eight games thus far. Those figures in the T20s don't go well for a middle-order batsman like Pandya. In eight games, he has only claimed four wickets with the ball as well.

Irfan Pathan, a 2007 T20 World Cup participant and former star of the Indian cricket team, raised many questions about the current form of Hardik Pandya.

Recently, on The Ranveer Show, veteran Indian cricket player Robin Uthappa who was also a member of the team that won the 2007 T20 World Cup spoke in-depth about Hardik Pandya's experience. Since taking over as the Mumbai Indians' captain in place of Rohit Sharma, Pandya has received a ton of trolling.

He is a guy who has got the caliber and potential to be an all-time great for the Indian team. He was let go by the team that discovered him, he went to another franchise. After winning 3-4 titles with them, he left. He must have felt a little bad; that will be there. He went to GT, won a title, and finished runners-up in another. Then the conversation began. ~Uthappa said

The mocking, trolling, the memes about his fitness. You don't think it hurts him? It hurts him. It hurts any human being. How many people know the reality of it? Hardik is dealing with mental health issues, for sure. We, as people, I understand, as Indians, we are emotional. But it is not right to impose this kind of treatment on any human being. It is unbecoming as a society for us to do that to someone and be okay with it. We should not be laughing along with it. We should not be forwarding these memes.