Virat Kohli was all praise for Hardik Pandya after he slammed a career-best 83 off 66 balls to guide the Indian cricket team to a comfortable win over Australia in Chennai.<\/p>\n
The victorious India and Australia landed in Kolkata on Monday after Virat Kohli\u2019s team put up a fighting display to clinch the rain-hit opening ODI in Chennai overnight. There is threat of rain over Thursday\u2019s second game at Eden Gardens as well.<\/p>\n
However, Hardik Pandya\u2019s rapidly growing stature as all-rounder has created all the buzz. The man Virat Kohli had compared to England\u2019s match-winner Ben Stokes recently, took the game by storm, hitting a career-best 83 off 66 balls.<\/p>\n
His six-hitting punctured Australia spinner Adam Zampa first and then his two strikes, accounting for Steve Smith (1) and in-form Travis Head (5) in the space of six deliveries, left Australia hobbled in their chase.<\/p>\n
Kohli hailed the 23-year-old as the man who made the difference. \u201cWe lost wickets but MS and Kedar played well. Hardik then, and MS finished it off like he does. Today was an example, Sri Lanka was the example of how good the middle and lower order can be,\u201d he said at the presentation ceremony at the MA Chidambaram Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cHardik believes in himself, and his innings was the game-changer. He possesses all three skills equally and we are lucky to have him.\u201d Pandya\u2019s 76 in the ICC Champions Trophy final against Pakistan was in a losing cause, but his century against Sri Lanka and the Chennai knock, allied to his skill with the ball, have added depth to India.<\/p>\n
With leg-spinner Yuzhvendra Chahal, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah taking charge of the bowling, Kohli pointed out India\u2019s \u201cbest T20 attack\u201d didn\u2019t give Australia much chance chasing 164 in 21 overs.<\/p>\n
MS Dhoni (79) guided Pandya in their 118-run partnership that bailed out India after the top order collapse, but like a true all-rounder, he produced the impact. Hammering three sixes and a four off Zampa in the 36th over turned the innings on its head.<\/p>\n
But Pandya played down his performance. \u201cIt was a good day for me\u2026\u201d He added: \u201cI don\u2019t think anything has changed. I am the same Hardik I was a year back. Maybe people\u2019s thinking was changed. To be honest, when Mahi bhai was batting with me, we knew what Zampa was going to bowl. I am glad what I am doing with the bat and ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Virat Kohli was all praise for Hardik Pandya after he slammed a career-best 83 off 66 balls to guide the Indian cricket team to a comfortable win over Australia in Chennai. The victorious India and Australia landed in Kolkata on Monday after Virat Kohli\u2019s team put up a fighting display to clinch the rain-hit opening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5348,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5346\/revisions\/5348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}