Sen inspiring shuttlers in home state

The crowd erupted in cheers as Uttarakhand shuttlers Aditi Bhatt and Angel Punera clinched the deciding doubles against Gujarat's Tasnim Mir and Shreya Lele, handing the home team a resounding start in the women's team event at the National Games here.

- Avishek Roy

KOLKATA: In 88 T20I innings so far, Hardik Pandya has remained unbeaten 25 times. That is also when Pandya aggregates a strike rate of over 178. When he doesn't go the distance? His strike rate drops to 140.78. Which is still good enough if you are thinking ballpark figures, probably not in Pandya's case since he operates largely at the backend of the innings. Tuesday was one such innings, a chase no less at Rajkot in the third game against England, where Pandya was averaging less than run-a-ball before being dismissed for 40 off 35 balls. India's defeat was inevitable.

Pandya's case is a bit peculiar. In very little time since MS Dhoni's retirement, he had emerged as India's designated all-rounder as well as slog overs enforcer. Be it the 2022 T20 World Cup semi-final, where he was the lone salvation act with a 33-ball 63, or the Pakistan game where he held one end up (37-ball 40) as Virat Kohli mounted an epic chase, Pandya has been known to be flexible to the demands of the game. But with the rider of being cautious initially.

India were okay with that. That approach, however, is now coming under more scrutiny, possibly prompted by Tuesday's defeat or because Pandya's strike rate hasn't crossed 117 in the last six innings. That's a sharp downturn in a format as fickle as T20. "One cannot take 20-25 balls to get set in a T20I," former India stumper Parthiv Patel said in the post-match show on Star Sports. "I understand taking your time but you have to keep rotating the strike. Hardik may have ended up with 40 off 35, but there were a lot of dot balls at the start of his innings."