IPL 2023: Never felt Hardik Pandya was a new captain – Ashish Nehra

Gujarat Titans head coach Ashish Nehra never felt Hardik Pandya was a new captain when the all-rounder led the team in IPL 2022. Pandya was able to lead from the front as he took Gujarat Titans to glory in their maiden edition of the IPL.

The right-hander scored a total of 487 runs in 16 matches as he batted at the top of his game in his first season as an IPL captain. Prior to IPL 2022, Pandya had played under the tutelage of Rohit Sharma in Mumbai Indians and had picked his brains.

Furthermore, Pandya also played under the captaincy of former skippers such as MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli for the national team and he learned a lot from them.

Pandya was able to get the best out of his players and Gujarat Titans were able to come up with a collective effort as Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha, David Miller, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Yash Dayal, Mohammad Shami, and Lockie Ferguson all contributed to the team’s success.

“Hardik Pandya, at times, people see him as a new captain, struggling from injuries. But when it comes to his captaincy, the kind of ability he has with the bat, and the ball, the kind of persona he has, he is a very positive person. I never doubted that (his captaincy),” Nehra told Jio Cinema on the eve of the IPL 2023 auction in Kochi.

“Now, in the hindsight, we are talking after winning, but it’s not about winning or losing. The kind of aura he has shown, if you ask me as a coach, you can look at a player and tell what he is thinking, Hardik Pandya is a very positive guy. I never felt he is a new captain and he doesn’t know what to do.

“He is a stable guy, he is a confident guy. He knows how to operate in IPL. Maybe, he is not someone who has done a lot of captaincy but he has been part of the IPL. He was a very important part of Mumbai Indians, who have won many titles. He was there. There was no shortage of IPL experience.

“Everybody has to start somewhere, nobody is a born captain. And you try to mold them. As support staff, we were trying to help him as much as possible,” he added.

After leading Gujarat Titans to triumph in IPL 2022, Pandya got the opportunity to lead India in the two-match T20I series against Ireland and the three-match T20I series against New Zealand. Pandya led the national team to victory in both of these series as a leader.