‘Chal abb bahaane mat bana’ – Fans react as Hardik Pandya defends ‘young team’ for their ‘mistakes’ in 1st WI vs IND T20I

Hardik Pandya-led India started their five-match T20I series against West Indies on a losing note. They restricted the hosts to 149/6 in 20 overs with skipper Rovman Powell and Nicholas Pooran with 48 off 32 and 41 off 34 remaining the best batters. Yuzvendra Chahal and Arshdeep Singh returned with two wickets each while skipper Hardik Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav scalped one each.

In reply, India could not even chase down the modest total. They fell short of the target by five runs as West Indies won the game by four runs. Tilak Varma with 39 off 22 remained the top scorer whereas Suryakumar Yadav with a run a ball 21 was the only other batter to get past the 20-run mark. Jason Holder remained the pick of the bowler for his figures of 2/19 and was adjudged the ‘Player of the Match’.

‘We made some errors which cost us the game’ – Hardik Pandya

Pandya later defended his team full of youngsters in the post-match presentation. “We were right in the chase and quite comfortable there. We made some errors which cost us the game which is fine. A young team will make mistakes. We will grow together. Throughout the game, we were in control of the game which was the positive in this game. Good four games coming ahead,” he said.

He further dissected the game in the post-match presentation. “In T20 cricket, if you lose wickets, it becomes difficult to chase down any total, that’s exactly what happened. A couple of hits can change the momentum towards you. When we lost a couple of wickets, that halted our chase. It (playing three spinners) was more to do with the conditions. We would like to give opportunities to the two wristies (Kuldeep and Chahal) to play together. Axar adds a very good component in his batting as well. We felt that was the right combination. Mukesh (Kumar) – to have these two weeks which he has had in West Indies – where he made debuts in all three formats is really good. Genuinely, he’s a nice guy. He has a very good heart, wants to contribute to the team. He bowled a couple of overs back to back and that was fantastic,” said Hardik.

Here’s how fans reacted: