With the change of both the head coach and the T20I captain, the next couple of months are expected to be rather interesting for Indian cricket as the team is having a whole transition in it’s leadership. Gambhir’s appointment as the head coach was being mostly expected and it was a rather un-surprising decision. However, Suryakumar Yadav getting the captaincy instead of Hardik Pandya was a big shocking news and the news came with an element of surprise.
Hardik Pandya was expected to be Rohit Sharma’s successor in the T20Is. But, the fact that Hardik had an unwanted relationship with injuries and Surya did not, made Surya the obvious choice.
This sudden, unexpected captaincy decision led to the raise of a lot of questions. What next for Hardik? Will it affect his relations with his long-time teammate Suryakumar? When will Hardik return to the ODI set-up?
When Pandya linked up with Indian team and gave Surya a hug, everything seemed normal, but a recent development coming out from Sri Lanka indicated that there may be much more to it. An informer, quoting a source, informed that when Suryakumar assembled his team for his first hurdle as India’s official T20I captain on Monday, Pandya was nowhere to be seen nearby.
“Today was the first practice session of the Indian team in Sri Lanka. The source present there told that when the new captain Suryakumar Yadav called the team for the first time in the Hurdle to address it, Hardik Pandya was not included in it. Now it is not known why he was not there at that time. However, he joined the practice session later,” the informer posted on X.
