Putting India in ‘difficult situations’ is Hardik’s priority as T20I captain

 Hardik Pandya is not afraid to put his side in tough situations during bilateral T20Is, where long-term wins are more important than short-term wins – he said that in the toss during the first T20I against Sri Lanka and repeated it after the match.

The record at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium favored the chasers, who had won 24 of the 41 T20s played there in the previous two years before Tuesday’s game. So it was understandable that Dasun Shanaka chose to field after winning the coin toss.

Hardik, who leads India in Rohit Sharma’s absence, was fine with that. “Frankly, we were going to bat first,” he said at the coin toss. “It’s a hunting ground, but I wanted our team to be challenged. In bilateral matches, we want to put ourselves in more difficult situations than [we] generally [do]. So I’m happy to bat because if we had won the coin toss we would have batted first anyway.”

It’s possible that Hardik was just playing mind games. But it is true that hitting first was the Achilles heel for India in T20Is. They have lost eight games in multi-team T20I tournaments since March 31, 2016, when they lost to the West Indies in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup. On all those occasions, they were first to bat.....Related post......