Stoic Hardik Pandya sports a smile as life goes on for India all-rounder

Hardik Pandya. Pic/AFP

Team India all-rounder Hardik Pandya remained tight-lipped on things that made him the talk of the town except for fitness, his impassive countenance masking his feelings as he tackled myriad challenges both on and off the field. For a player who has been a hot topic of discussion with all that has transpired of late, Pandya sported a pleasant smile and spoke at length on fitness while launching his sports apparel brand.

Two days ago, Hardik Pandya and Natasa Stankovic officially parted their ways after four years of marriage. Also, Hardik Pandya who was the obvious choice of India's next T20I captain failed to beat Suryakumar Yadav in the contention list. Suryakumar Yadav is the new captain of Team India in the upcoming series against Sri Lanka.

"When our body does not get tired, our mind gets tired. So, so many times in my life, the difference between when I was able to push my limits was always the fact that when my mind gets tired, I will tell my body to just push because you will always have extra effort in your body," Pandya said. "The difference between, if you do 20 and if I do 20, we are on the same level. But if I push to 25 and if I challenge my mindset, next time I'm going to do 25, next time I'm going to do 30," he added.

Fitness was somewhere concern for Hardik Pandya becoming the next T20I captain which also led him to not be able to feature in all three formats of the game.

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Earlier, Hardik Pandya received the love and respect of Indian fans during the "Men in Blue" victory parade in Mumbai. Wankhede Stadium where he was getting booed during the IPL 2024, the same venue turned their boos into cheers for the star Indian all-rounder after India's T20 World Cup 2024 triumph.

But a couple of weeks since the ultimate high, Pandya has become a man who has also lost a few significant things. India's T20 World Cup vice-captain Pandya was perceived as someone who would fill in the big shoes of Rohit Sharma but the news of his removal from leadership role almost coincided with his divorce announcement. But Pandya showed no impact of all that when he made his first public appearance to launch his sports apparel brand with Fancode here, sharing insights into his fitness even though talks in the Indian cricket circles remain around him being injury-prone. Only a few months ago Pandya was at the receiving end of fans' wrath for replacing Rohit as Mumbai Indians' captain, but he did not react until he turned it around for himself. The opportunity arrived with Pandya playing a stellar role in India's World Cup win and that was when he acknowledged that the going had actually been tough.

"The point that it is very, very important to sometime clean your mind as well, that your body has much more than what you can think and that video (he watched as a 16-year-old) stayed with me for so long that, every time in my life, when my trainer is telling me to do 10 push-ups, I've always ended up doing 15," the 30-year-old shared. "And that has pushed my limits and I think slowly, everyone who wants to start with a fitness journey they should focus on that," said Pandya, adding that his highest score in the Yo-Yo test has been 21.7, only a few notches lesser than the upper limit. "Start pushing your barrier every single day because the human body is such a lovely creation by god that it will mould however you want (it) to, however you want to have it, it's just that it just needs little hard work," Pandya said. He may not be new coach Gautam Gambhir's choice for captaincy but he was once described as the "only player in the country to do what he can do" by chief selector Ajit Agarkar. Pandya shared insights into what drives him.

"I never knew what fitness would do to me, but it's just that I felt it that for me I always wanted to be No. 1 in everything which I do, so in a habit of that, I kept training a lot when I was young, I pushed myself a lot, ran a lot so I had a very good strong base," he said. "Obviously, there was not much knowledge about the body, not much knowledge about how to increase my fitness, but because my base was strong and I did the basics which you are supposed to do while training, it helped me when I came to the higher level." "I used to bowl if I'm not wrong 130s; higher 130s, I was able to go 140 plus, 142 by pushing, that's when I realised by 2017 or not as soon as I started getting more more into my body, more knowledge about it and that's when I start pushing," he said.

(With PTI Inputs)