India deserved better than Hardik at 50 percent: MI skipper on World Cup miss

Hardik Pandya has explained why he decided to step away from India’s ODI World Cup squad, as he didn’t want the team to have a player who wasn’t fully fit.

Hardik suffered an injury during the league match against Bangladesh in Pune, and was then eventually ruled out for the remainder of the competition. The all-rounder went on to make his return in the DY Patil T20 tournament ahead of the IPL.

Speaking at the Mumbai Indians press conference, Hardik said that the initial scan showed it was just a niggle, but the injury got worse as time passed by.

“When I got injured. When it happened, I had no clue how bad it is or how good it is. When I went to the scan as well. Initially, it just showed because, when I twisted my whole ankle, it just showed that it’s just a little niggle, which would be fine.”

“But as a couple of hours progressed, it showed the real picture where my ankle became like a big ankle. And in that process, straight away next day I went to NCA to make sure that I fasten my processes and make sure that I come back,” said Hardik.

Do I want to represent India at 50 percent?

Hardik went on to say that he didn’t want to represent India at 50 percent during the competition.

“Again, we tried every day to make sure that we are available for the World Cup and we had to take a call after 12th day where I had a reoccurrence again where my injury kind of expanded more.”

And the question was that ‘do I want to represent India at 50 percent? And the answer was No. Because India deserves better than that, and I myself will not be able to justify the fact that I’m coming, not completely ready,” said Hardik.

“And from there obviously his journey started of my rehab and the whole process was the focus was only to make sure that I come back as soon as possible, but with injuries and with something like a freak injury which I had, you need to give time because it is not something which goes away in mobility or it goes with physio helping you. It is just natural body recovery which you need to do.”

Hardik’s first match as the skipper of MI will be against Gujarat Titans on March 24.

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