English all-rounder Moeen Ali placed his bet on Hardik Pandya and labelled him the most suitable candidate to lead India going forward amid speculations of captain Rohit Sharma forfeiting the T20 captaincy after the team’s exit in the semifinals of the T20 World Cup. The player was talking exclusively to ANI while he was leading Morrisville Samp Army in the T10 league, playing in the Abu Dhabi.
“Make Hardik Pandya captain of team India. He is the best option team India have right now,” said Moeen.
Moeen reflected on India’s semi final defeat against his team and cited that the Asian giants missed the ploy of playing a leg-spinner in the crucial game which proved fatal for them.
“Not playing leg spinner that day cost team India a lot. In my opinion if a leg spinner would have played in the team that day, the situation could have been different,” expressed the all-rounder.
Moen was in the squad that day and he felt that the ‘Men in Blue’ lacked a few runs, “Yes we were confident that day as India was short of runs and we expected that they could put around 200 or plus on score board but they posted 160 plus. Our batsman were confident of samshing Indian bowlers and that’s what they did,” said the English player. The all-rounder shared his views on the 10 over format of the T10 league that he is a part of and mentioned that the bowlers find it very difficult since the odds are stacked heavily against them.
Talking about the format of T10 league he said, “This format is very unique and fast and it’s very difficult for bowlers to ball as batsman totally smash the bowlers.”
Moeen heaped praises on Virat Kohli for coming out of a slump in form and termed it a sign of a great player.
“Virat is back in form this is a good sign, every player goes through this stage once in lifetime but only some could come out from it and Virat did it,” stated the player. He also talked about talismanic batsman Suryakumar yadav who has been in stellar form this year and said, “I hope Suryakumar Yadav plays and continues playing like this till 2023 World Cup.”
