"Back at it": Hardik Pandya resumes batting practice as IPL, T20 WC draw closer

New Delhi [India], February 15 : Star India all-rounder Hardik Pandya took to social media on Thursday, sharing a video of him sweating it out on the field while practicing batting.
In a video posted on his Instagram handle, Pandya shared a video of him hitting his trademark shots, which have been a big missing from the cricket field in blue-coloured jersey for a while.
"Back at it," said the caption of Pandya's post.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3XsyiZRvcE/?hl=en
Pandya has not played international cricket for India since getting an ankle injury during India's ICC Cricket World Cup league stage match against Bangladesh in October last year. He missed out the series of five T20Is against Australia at home, the tour to South Africa as well, which consisted of three ODIs and T20Is each. Suryakumar Yadav, the number-one ranked T20I batter stepped up as captain in Pandya's absence.
Notably, Pandya is set to captain Mumbai Indians (MI), replacing their five-time Indian Premier League (IPL) trophy-winning skipper Rohit Sharma in the 2024 season of the cash-rich league.
In November last year, Pandya moved back from Gujarat Titans (GT) to his former franchise as part of a trade between both franchises. The star all-rounder spent two momentous years with GT, spearheading their campaign in the cash-rich league with aplomb. In GT's debut season in 2022, Hardik got them off to a fairytale start, with the team lifting the coveted trophy.
But in the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup, set to start from June 1 in the West Indies and USA, Rohit will be leading the side with hopes of ending India's ICC trophy drought.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah on Wednesday confirmed that skipper Rohit Sharma will be captaining Men in Blue in the ICC T20 World Cup being held in West Indies and USA this year and expressed optimism that Team India will win the coveted T20 cricket prize and end their ICC trophy drought of over a decade.
Jay Shah was at the Saurashtra Cricket Association (SCA) stadium, which has been renamed after former BCCI and SCA secretary Niranjan Shah ahead of the third Test between India and England.
"We may have lost the final of World Cup 2023. But we won the hearts of everyone by winning 10 matches in a row. I am confident that India will lift the 2024 T20 World Cup under Rohit Sharma's captaincy at Barbados," said the BCCI secretary.
Shah said Rohit's recall in T20Is was due to Hardik getting injured during the ODI World Cup. "In T20s, Hardik will be the captain for certain [in the future]," said Shah at Rajkot as quoted by ESPNCricinfo to the media.