Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], March 9 (ANI): All-rounder Hardik Pandya has in recent times stuck to playing as a finisher in the national team. While he did bowl in the second ODI against Australia in Sydney in November, the question on everyone’s mind has been whether he will return to bowling consistently any time soon. And if his preparations for the upcoming T20Is against England is anything to go by, he could be hitting the bowling crease against the No.1 ranked T20 side.
In a video shared by Hardik on Twitter, while he is seen practising the big shots to begin with, he can be seen bowling full throttle towards the end of the clip. “Preparation done. Can’t wait to get on the field on the 12th,” Hardik wrote.
Not just the Australia series, the all-rounder also didn’t hit the bowling crease for his franchise Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League (IPL) title-winning campaign in 2020.
It was his prowess with the bat that saw Hardik being adjudged as ‘Man of the Series’ in the three-match T20I series against Australia which India won 2-1.
The 27-year-old was in India’s Test squad for the series against England, but he did not play a single Test as Virat Kohli-led side won the four-match series 3-1 to progress to the final of the World Test Championship.
WTC final will be played between India and New Zealand from June 18-22 at the Ageas Bowl, Southampton.
The upcoming five-match T20I series against England will help India garner perfect practice before the T20 World Cup which is slated to be played in October-November this year in India.
India’s T20I squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma (vc), KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Varun Chakravarthy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur. (ANI)