Ever looked at someone and wondered what metal are they made of? Having the same 2 hands, same two legs, breathing the same air, and tied by the same constraints as most of the others, and yet being so different from them?
I have, looking at a friend of mine. We used to call him by the name Harry.
This guy inspires me to wake up every morning and chase that dream.
In this blog, I will be narrating the story of Harry.
Harry was born in a small village and father used to own a small car finance business.
Like his father, he was always interested in Finance.
He belonged to a middle class family since his father’s business was running well.
But when Harry was 5 years old, his father’s business was shut down and his father had to work odd jobs to keep the family running.
With time, the family’s financial struggle was increasing and father’s health was deteriorating.
But with determination, hardwork and father’s support Harry completed his MBA and got placed in one of the top Fintech startups in India, in 2015.
The Finance head of this company had noticed Harry in 2014, while the firm had visited his college for internships. Harry was the only candidate who got a full time offer by this startup.
And from there, there was no looking back.
With his rapid learning abilities and hunger for knowledge, in just one year, he had the most unique skill set in the company, covering all the departments, be it finance, product, technology, operations, legal, marketing or even HR.
He was so promising that one of the former CEOs of the company praised him saying that he had a very bright future.
He received promotion after promotion every year. Within 7 years, he was the direct reportee to the CEO of the company.
But these 7 years were full of challenges for him. On the professional front, due to excess workload, he went through fatigue, burnouts, mental freezes and stress. On the personal front, he lost his father in 2021.
The firm was incorporated in 2008. In the first 7 years, from 2008 to 2015, the firm hardly saw any upward trend in its numbers.
But from 2015 to 2022, the firm grew 61% in valuation, and Harry’s strategies and execution had a huge role to play in that uptrend.
In 2022, he switched to a rival startup firm, comparatively much smaller and younger than the company he was working at. He joined there as the CEO.
For 2 years in a row, his new firm beat his previous one in terms of both top line and bottomline.
No one could foresee this happening. It seemed close to impossible a couple of years ago, on paper atleast.
But Harry, with his leadership qualities and sheer passion towards his work, had made it a reality.
This took the industry by storm, and new technologies, introduced to the Indian Fintech ecosystem by Harry, were the talk of the country.
Harry’s caliber, and his contribution to the rival firm, was no foreign land for the board of directors of his previous firm.
Also, the current CEO of Harry’s previous firm was approaching retirement.
The board thus decided to approach Harry to re join the firm, as the CEO.
Harry, with his drive for challenges, took this offer. Not only was he much younger to the previous CEO, but also had lesser goodwill in the market, ofcourse.
Thus, this decision of the board did not go well with the shareholders.
And they started criticising Harry at every decision he took. They also started pressurising the board, which in turn started pressurising Harry.
Every aspect of his job – Business strategy development, capital allocation, Risk and compliance management, operations management, human resource management, marketing management, strategic vision and leadership, literally everything was under scrutiny.
Being a human after all , Harry started loosing his flair and numbers started falling right from the first month he took over.
The entire first half of 2024 was a season of decreasing numbers and lack of trust among the investors.
But he wasn’t doing much wrong. The ideas were still flowing, execution still in place, and his passion still immense.
In June 2024, like so many times before, he managed to turn things around.
He again envisaged and implemented a revolutionary technology which helped the firm do all time high numbers in June.
So much so, that the same fans who were full of abuses and dissent 6 months ago, were full of praises for Hardik.
Yes, you read it right.
Harry is Hardik Pandya.
The story you’ve just read is a metaphor for the real journey of Hardik Pandya.
Much like an ambitious young man from a small town who moves to a bustling city to pursue an MBA, climbing the corporate hierarchy to reach the top, Pandya’s journey wasn’t a fairy tale. He, too, faced skepticism — from coaches, former cricketers, and even fans who wondered if he was cut out for the pressures of international cricket.
Let’s re write the story, just this time, the real one. A story of grit, struggle, and success.
In 1993, Himanshu Pandya was blessed with Hardik Pandya.
Himanshu ran a small car finance business in Surat which he shut down and moved to Vadodra when Hardik was five to provide his sons with better cricket training facilities.
To support his family in Vadodara, Pandya’s father took up odd jobs. The family was already struggling when Hardik’s father suffered two heart attacks in a single night. Six months later, he had another heart attack, causing great fear for his family. Fortunately, he received timely medical attention that saved his life.
Hardik and brother Krunal cumulatively earned 35 thousand a year, which had also stopped after Hardik was dropped from the team.
After these incidents, Hardik and Krunal’s lives changed completely. Their family faced a severe financial crisis, and the fear of losing their father haunted them every day.
But with determination, hardwork and father’s support, Hardik was selected in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy to represent Baroda in 2013. He got his big breakthrough when he was bought by the Mumbai Indians in the 2015 IPL auction.
This was because his innings of 82* in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy 2014 against Mumbai impressed MI head coach John wright. Wright was amazed by the shots Pandya played against the likes of Zaheer Khan.
He was so promising that Sachin Tendulkar praised him saying that he had a very bright future.
In IPL 2015, he pulled a match from the jaws of defeat against CSK, by smashing 3 sixes in the 19th over, when 30 were required off the last two overs.
This was when the world was introduced to Hardik Pandya.
And when did the world know that he was a man for the big occasions?
In that same IPL, when he played a sensational innings of 61 off 31 balls against KKR in a do or die match to help MI reach the playoffs!
Inevitably, he made his T20I debut in January 2016 and was selected for the T20 World Cup in 2016.
There again, he rose up to the occasion when India were at the brink of being eliminated in the group stages.
In a super 10 match Vs Bangladesh, he defended 11 runs in the last over.
9 of those 11 runs were scored in the first three balls. 2 required off the last 3, and Pandya pulled off a Pandya.
He gave away no run in the last 3 balls, including 2 catches and a run out, to clinch the match by 1 run and keep India alive in the World Cup.
Subsequently, he made his international ODI debut in 2016 during New Zealand’s tour of India ,and took 3 crucial wickets to bag the Man of the match award in his very first ODI.
With his all round abilities, Hardik had become a regular in the Indian ODI and T20 sides. He also received his test cap in 2017.
But in the Asia cup 2018, a nasty thing happened in a match Vs Pakistan.
Last time they met, in the champions trophy 2017 final, Hardik was the lone warrior and at one point was looking threatening enough to chase down the total of 338 alone, if it weren’t for Jadeja to run him out on 76. Although India lost the match miserably, Hardik again proved to be a bazooka among pistols when lives were on the line.
This was the next big India Pakistan encounter and all eyes were on Pandya.
But while bowling, Hardik fell on the ground, and the medical staff was immediately called on the ground.
This is where his career threatening accute lower back injury started taking roots.
Hardik had to be taken off the ground on a stretcher and couldn’t move his body at all.
This is when he decided to take a break from international cricket.
The following year, in 2019, he made certain comments on a reality show which did not align with the Indian culture and mentality. He faced severe criticism by both fans and cricket gurus for those comments, for which he apologised publicly, later that year.
Ironically, 2019 IPL was his best one till date, both with the bat and the ball. He scored 402 runs and took 14 wickets to race MI to the title.
In the 2019 ODI World Cup also, he was looking in good touch, scoring 226 runs and taking 10 wickets.
But his back injury relapsed after the World Cup, and he had to undergo a surgery.
His treatment and recovery was going on in a planned way, and he did not bowl a single over in IPL 2020 and 2021.
His performance with the bat also saw a descending trend with just over 400 runs, both IPLs combined.
For the T20 World Cup 2021, he was dropped from list A of the BCCI contract to list C.
In between all this, on the personal fronts, Hardik lost his father to a cardiac arrest in January 2021.
For the mega auction of 2022, MI did not retain Hardik Pandya.
While Hardik Pandya was playing for MI, between 2015 to 2022, it’s valuation had grown by 61% and Hardik had played a huge role in that uptrend.
He was bought by Gujarat Titans in 2022 and was appointed as their captain.
Captaining his first ever IPL season, Pandya’s Gujarat Titans supposedly looked a weak team on paper.
Most of the cricket gurus and analysts had written them off, saying that they won’t even make it to the playoffs.
But fate had other plans.
New faces like Sai Sudarshan, Sai Kishor, Rehmanullah Gurbaaz, Abhinav Manohar emerged from nowhere and were successfully getting the team home.
Players like Rahul Tewatia, Wriddhiman Saha, Yash Dayal, Alzarri Joseph, and Shubman Gill who had not found success for their previous respective franchises, were winning lost matches for GT.
And veterans like David Miller and Pandya himself were also proving to be fatal finishers.
And so, Pandya’s men in blue not only reached the playoffs, but also bought the trophy home.
He ticked all the boxes in the season, be it leadership, batting or bowling. He scored 487 runs in 15 games, which was the highest for the season among the Titans, and also took 8 wickets, 3 of which came on the big day of the finals.
Thousands of fans in Ahmedabad flooded the city’s streets on as Gujarat Titans took out a victory parade on an open-top bus to celebrate their title triumph in a memorable maiden season in the IPL.
In the 2023 edition of the IPL , Gujarat Titans again reached the final but unfortunately lost to CSK on the very last delivery. Pandya’s captaincy was again applauded by fans and people were actually starting to see him as the future Indian T20I captain.
But then, on 15th December 2023, his career took another awkward turn.
For the 2024 IPL, Mumbai Indians had bought back HP.
They officially announced Hardik Pandya as their captain, replacing Rohit Sharma, who had led them to an IPL title five times.
This decision of the management did not go well with the fans.
Rumours started floating around that Hardik had mentioned a captaincy clause in his contract which MI fulfilled.
And from there, he started receiving hate. Tons of it.
The equivalent of hate received by (Azharuddin after loosing the WC 1996 semifinal)
+ (Tendulkar,Dravid,Sehwag after loosing a league match to Bangladesh in 2007 WC) + (Yuvraj Singh for his 21 ball 11 in WC T20 final 2014) + (Dhoni for his slow innings in 2019 WC semifinal) the whole multiplied by 10.
That too by his own countrymen. It all started with social media backlash where fans would not only abuse him, but also his family.
But he wasn’t doing much wrong. His pace was still there, he was still middling the balls, and he was still taking risky but calculated decisions as a captain, just like he did for the Gujarat titans.
But these were angry fans, and anger doesn’t last, one would think.
But it did. Right from the first MI match of IPL 2024 till the last, it didn’t decline a tad bit.
Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Mohali, Mumbai, during the toss, while bowling, while batting, while fielding.
Entire India! Every moment!
Imagine standing in front of a crowd of 40,000 people, throwing stones at you. Stones of words. You cannot open your mouth, you cannot get back at them. Your fault? You asked for what you think you deserve.
Sanjay Manjrekar, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and many others tried to silence the crowd, but without any luck.
Mumbai Indians, which was once his home, seemed like a foreign land.
The 6 months that followed were filled with miserable misbehaviour, threats to his family and social media abuses, by the same people who used to support him at every step.
Being a human after all , Hardik started loosing his flair.
The few Hardik supporters left, couldn’t stop wondering when will all this come to an end.
Will it at all?
One fine day, it did. Let’s jump to that day.
On 29th June 2024, we are at the T20 World Cup final at Barbados against South Africa.
India had not lost a single match in the World Cup, just like it’s 50 over counterpart in 2023.
They had set a respectable total of 176 on the board and the game was evenly balanced at the end of the 13th over of the South African innings when they needed 68 off the last 7 overs.
SA were 4 wickets down, and did not have a deep batting lineup. Klassen and Miller were at the crease and India needed one breakthrough to turn the tide in their favour.
But the next two overs put India completely at the back foot.
14 runs off Kuldeeps’s and 24 runs off Axar’s meant that India faced a major setback.
A “what the hell just happened” setback.
And somehow, when SA needed just 30 off the last 30 balls with a relentless Klassen still at the crease, they again found themselves in trouble, just like the 50 over WC final.
India were completely out of the match, but 2 magical overs by Bumrah, who not only dismissed Klassen but also gave away just 6 runs, along with disciplined line and lengths from Arshdeep and Hardik meant that India still had a chance, with 16 required of the last over and David Miller on strike.
By the sheer churn of happenstance, it was Hardik Pandya who had to bowl that last over.
On the first ball itself, he dismissed the dangerous Miller, although all of us had our hearts in our mouths when we saw Surya running towards the boundary to take that catch.
And just like so many times previously, he got his side home. Just this time, on the biggest of platforms, at the highest level.
He fell knees first to the ground after bowling that last delivery, looking at the heavens, teary eyed.
It’s almost as if we could here him saying “I did it, thank you God”, with his eyes.
After that final, when Rohit Sharma was appreciating him to bowl that crucial last over, you see him smiling like a 5 year old, certainly not someone with an “attitude problem”.
The question is, how did he manage to turn this around? How did majority of the haters turn into fans? Was it only that one day; that of the WC final.
If I were to put it in Dhoni style, “Definitely not”
Then what makes him so special? Here’s what:
- Uniqueness: With Hardik Pandya, you would not be able to tell if he is a batting all rounder or a bowling all rounder. No one in the world, except Jack Kallis, has shown fast bowling all round abilities like he does. When not with the bat, with the ball. When not with the ball, with the bat. But he contributes. Every damn time! And I’m not even starting with the intangible benefits that he brings to the table with his fielding.
- Performance under pressure: HP has come to the team’s rescue, whenever asked for. Apart from the examples mentioned above, here are few other times when Hardik stood up on big occasions:
- Hardik ,Pakistan and Asia cups have been a love affair. In the 2022 Asia cup, Hardik again flaunted his all round abilities by taking 3 important wickets, and scoring 33 runs of 17 deliveries which included finishing the match with a six. Once again, he single handedly won the game for India.
- Again, against Pakistan in the WC T20 2022, India were 4-31 in 6.1 overs when Pandya came in to bat, chasing a total of 160. Although it was Kohli who played first pedal in this match,if it weren’t for Pandya’s 3 crucial wickets and 37 ball 40, even he could not have won the game. India managed to drag this to the very last ball before winning by 4 wickets.
- This time not for a winning cause, but Pandya again stepped up on the big occasion when he played a scintillating knock of 63 off 33 balls against England in the WC semi final 2022, to steer India to a respectable total f 168.
- Resilience: People mocked him for his injuries, people mocked him for not letting his colleagues reach milestones, people mocked him for asking for captaincy and people even mocked him for his divorce. But the man took everything without a flinch. Because that’s what true titans do. They are indifferent to the temporary reactions of people around them and focus on the controllables. When they face setbacks, multiple setbacks, on different fronts, from all directions, it’s their resilience which gets them through. Pandya’s resilience is one which will remembered by everyone, both fans and haters, for decades, if not centuries to come.
Through the crests and troughs of his career, one thing about HP that hasn’t changed at all, is his mindset.
“Our body does not get tired. Our mind does. So train the mind” ~ Hardik Pandya