The IPL 2021 has certainly given something to public to cheer about and feel happy in times of the coronavirus pandemic. While few matches of the league have been high scoring, few of them have been low scoring as bowlers have shown that T20 doesn’t belong to the batsmen completely. The sixth match of the tournament which was played between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore was also a low-scoring match. Batting first, RCB managed only 149 runs at the loss of 8 wickets and SRH could have won the game if its batsmen had played little sensibly.
The start of the SRH innings was not good as opener Wriddhiman Saha got out for 1 run after playing 9 balls but the skipper David Warner played a beautiful innings of 54 runs for which he played 37 deliveries. The other batsman who contributed well was Manish Pandey who scored 38 runs for which he played 39 balls but failed to take his team home as a winner.
Manish Pandey got slammed mercilessly by the SRH fans and former cricketers after the Hyderabad franchise lost the match by 6 runs because he had played a good number of balls and had spent a good amount of time on the crease so it was expected from him to finish the match for his team. When everything was looking going the SRH way, things changed completely in the 17th over as Shahbaz Ahmed took 3 important wickets of Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey and Abdul Samad.
The former Indian cricketer Ashish Nehra also opened on the SRH Vs RCB match and said that the RCB skipper Virat Kohli brought his left-arm spinner for bowling at the right time but the manner in which the SRH batsmen got out on his bowling, it felt as if they were not proper batsmen but tailenders, especially Manish Pandey.
Nehra is of the opinion that the cricketers who bat at 9, 10 and 11 don’t have much capability to play the moving deliveries because of which they mostly play shots at long-on and mid-wicket but a proper batsman who has the experience of playing under pressure and is in good form will hit the ball towards mid-off and cover.
Nehra goes harsh on Manish Pandey when he says that the latter has failed to secure his berth in the Indian squad because he is not able to play well in the under pressure situations. Nehra gave the example of Hardik Pandya, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, etc. and said that Manish Pandey made his debut before these guys but now these youngsters have left him behind with a big distance because of their ability to play under pressure and also because they know how to adapt themselves in different situations.
Another former Indian cricketer Ajay Jadeja has also criticized Manish Pandey for his slow innings and said that he has no doubt Manish Pandey won’t be a part of SRH’s playing eleven from now on because they will certainly think about including only those players who can finish the match for them after settling on the pitch. Ajay Jadeja adds that there will be some changes taking place in the SRH camp which is quite natural.
Do you think that Manish Pandey’s campaign in the IPL 2021 is over? Let us know your views in this connection.