Hardik Pandya vs 7 legendary all-rounders after their first ten Tests
Ever since his Test debut against Sri Lanka in 2017, Hardik Pandya has been quite decent for India in the format.
He started off his career with a fifty followed by a century in Sri Lanka before he toured South Africa with the Indian team where he scored a counter-attacking 93 before failing in the other matches. In the ongoing Test series against England, Pandya has shown a lot of promise with the bat as he is one of the two batsmen who scored at least 10 runs in all the innings he played so far.
The application he has been showing is good to watch and if he continues the way he is approaching his batting, he is surely set to cement his place in the team as a batsman, if not an all-rounder.
The Indian team management should show enough faith in him with the ball as they use him as the fourth pacer and bring him to bowl when the first-choice pacers needed a rest. When he was brought on early, he ended up taking a five-wicket haul against England.
Yes, Hardik has to be more consistent with the ball but at the same time, he should be backed by the skipper like he was given the second new ball in the second innings of the third Test against England.
In the ten matches he has played so far, he has scored 528 runs at an average of 35.2 with the help of one ton and four fifties. With the ball, he has picked up 16 wickets at an average of 27.69 and struck every 52 balls.
Hardik's career was off to a good start and let us compare where the legendary fast-bowling all-rounders stand after playing their first ten Test matches.
Kapil Dev
Kapil Dev made his debut for India against Pakistan in 1978 and ended his career as India's best all-rounder.
In his first ten Tests, he had scalped 29 wickets at an average of 39 and struck every 66.3 balls. He also picked up just a solitary five-wicket haul with 7/84 being his best bowling efforts.
With the bat, Kapil Dev had scored 510 runs at an average of 42.5 with the help of a solitary ton in his first ten matches.
He eventually ended his career with 5248 runs in 131 matches at an average of 31.05 with the bat and 434 wickets at an average of 29.64 with the ball.