‘Take More Responsibility’: Hardik Pandya’s Strong Message To Batters Despite Cruising Win Over Windies In 4th T20I

'Take More Responsibility': Hardik Pandya's Strong Message To Batters

INDIA’s opening pair of Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal made the mockery of a chase of 179 by acing it with immaculate ease and star in thrashing West Indies by nine wickets in the fourth T20I at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium on Saturday.

After Shimron Hetmyer was breezy in his stroke play to slam a 39-ball 61 and take West Indies to a competitive 178/8 in 20 overs, Gill and Jaiswal absolutely bossed the chase to help India level the series at 2-2, with Sunday’s game now a winner-takes-it-all decider.

Though Gill fell for 77 off 47 balls, laced with three fours and five sixes, Jaiswal went on to stay unbeaten on 84 off 51 balls, hitting 11 fours and five sixes, in just his second T20I game as India pulled off the highest successful men’s T20I chase at the venue.

Though the pitch looked to have slowed down during the chase, Gill and Jaiswal combined power and timing to hit sizzling shots and find boundaries easily against a listless West Indies bowling line-up in their mammoth 165-run opening stand.

Hardik Pandya’s Message To Batters

Hardik Pandya was happy with India’s comfortable win over Windies but still wanted his batters to be more responsible going forward as they level the series after falling 0-2 at the start.

“Gill and Jaiswal were brilliant. There is no doubt over their skillset. They just needed to spend some time between the wickets. Going forward we have to take more responsibility as a batting group and support the bowlers. I’ve always believed bowlers win matches,” said Pandya after the match,” said Pandya in the post-match presentation.

“We lost two games but in the first game, it was our own errors. We were cruising and in the last four overs, we slipped. We spoke about how these kinds of games show our character.”

“The boys took it (defeats) in their stride. The two games (after the first two defeats) we played reflected that we pulled up our socks and played some good cricket,” he added.