Image Courtesy- Hindustan Times
Indian batsman Manish Pandey is all set to board the plane to Sri Lanka as part of India’s young limited-overs squad.
Manish Pandey is one of the most underrated players, despite having a great sense of cricket, he has been dropped many times. The 31-year-old was last seen in an Indian team jersey in December 2020 in the first T20I against Australia and his last ODI was against New Zealand in February 2020.
Pandey’s coach, Irfan Sait, under whom cricketer started coaching from his time at the Karnataka Institute of Cricket (KIOC), has commented on Pandey’s selection for the tour against Sri Lanka.
Irfan Sait said in an interview with Sportskeeda “I am only hoping and praying that he has a fair run. If he gets a settled batting order and a series of matches to play, he will be in a great position to show his skills. Manish Pandey is a competitor and he is always ready for any combat. He’s so skilful. If you look at his track record, whether it is a four-day Ranji Trophy game, a T20 game, or an ODI, he’s been up to it. He’s done very very well for our state.”
He added “As a junior, he was always opening the batting. But given the scenario in senior cricket, and the Karnataka side, he has been fantastic at No. 3, 4, and 5. (Batting) at No.4 would be ideal, but he is good at any one of these positions (sic).”
Irfan Sait, who have seen cricketer from his early phase career, recalled an incident that showed him the capability of cricketer.
He recalled and quoted “He played an innings for our second division Jawans Cricket Club and he was only 14-and-a-half or 15 at the time. I had a whole lot of seniors playing in the same club, and we were gunning for a championship so that we could get promoted and come to the first division. When all others were struggling, this young kid scored 155 and helped us win the game. And those runs came in about 80 balls. Even in a side that had Ranji players, he was far ahead of them even at that age.”
India squad vs Sri Lanka
Shikhar Dhawan (Captain), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Rana, Ishan Kishan (Wicket-keeper), Sanju Samson (Wicket-keeper), Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (Vice-captain), Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Chetan Sakariya
Net Bowlers: Ishan Porel, Sandeep Warrier, Arshdeep Singh, Sai Kishore, Simarjeet Singh