Hardik Pandya finished the third T20I against the West Indies with a winning six at the Providence Stadium yesterday, August 8. However, it did not exactly go down well with the Indian cricket community.

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Chasing 160 in a must-win game to keep the series alive, Indian openers Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal fell for cheap scores of six and one respectively.

Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma then steadied the innings. ‘SKY’ went on a trademark T20 rampage, scoring 83 off 44 balls and taking India to a position of safety. Tilak, in just his third international game, took stock and played second fiddle, remaining unbeaten on 49 off 37 balls.

Pandya, who had come in at No.5, finished the game off with a six when India needed two off 14 balls. With Tilak unbeaten on 49 at the other end, the decision to finish the game with a big shot meant that the the youngster was stranded one short of a milestone.

The incident gave rise to heated debates on social media. People also brought up several instances from the past where players had blocked a few deliveries to allow their batting partners to reach their milestones towards the closing stages of run-chases.

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One such incident was MS Dhoni’s dead-bat block in the 2014 T20 World Cup semi-final that allowed Virat Kohli to hit the winning runs.

On his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra mentioned how Tilak was robbed of a fifty: “You don’t need NRR (net run rate). It would’ve made no difference. He told Tilak to go easy but tried to hit big shots himself. You needed two runs off 13 balls, and he smashed a six.

“I’m sure they want to build a culture that doesn’t care about individual milestones. But even a not out doesn’t really matter here, even if you were out there, you still had 12 balls there to score two runs. Tilak was denied a chance to score a fifty. That’s just my opinion, though.”

Pandya has been in the firing line for his captaincy for some time. In the second T20I, he had not completed Yuzvendra Chahal’s quota of four overs despite the latter bringing India back in the game. India ended up losing that match and Pandya’s move was widely questioned.

Related tags:

Match CoverageInternational CricketWest Indies v IndiaSuryakumar YadavSeries EditorialHardik PandyaTilak Varma