“Everybody should have a Hardik Pandya in life,” he once said during a conversation. He was all serious. Nothing was meant to be read ‘between the lines’. He seriously believed the qualities he’s been blessed with – as a son, a brother, a husband, father, friend – were second to none.
“In some role or the other, we must all have a Hardik around us at all times,” he insisted.
He still does.
His ability to be caring, the willingness to give, the time he is always willing to share when it comes to his loved ones, the fun-loving ways. If you have a ‘Hardik’ around, chances are you’re likely to be in great company. Always.
Except, cricket.
That’s the only space perhaps where everybody cannot have a Hardik. He’ll agree too. That’s a space reserved exclusively for the Indian cricket team and the Mumbai Indians. If you are not Team India, if you’re not MI, you probably cannot have him. Not for long anyway.
If you were Gujarat Titans, you’d know this first-hand. They had him, played with him, won with him, built with him a lifetime of memories and then saw him leave. He left and went back to where he thought he belonged. Where he felt he belonged.
He went back home.
But wasn’t Gujarat supposed to be ‘home’ for this Vadodara-born? Yes, for everything else but the IPL. When it came to the T20 league that had blessed him with everything life could offer, home had to be where the heart is.
Mumbai.
Let’s take a journey back in Hardik’s life to understand this better.
The Beginnings
Life wasn’t all hunky-dory.
Already 22, he would wake up every single morning to watch his family’s finances perennially blowing cold. There wasn’t day when the next-door grocer or the nearby pharmacy didn’t allow the family some credit. He remembers calling the local state cricket association to find out if his or his brother’s domestic match fees had been credited to the account. There was always this fear that the bank would confiscate his automobile next month over a pending EMI.
Hitching rides round the town to get any work done, watching father’s health suffer on occasions, struggling to find feet as an adult, wondering if there was any future at all.
Nobody wanted a Hardik Pandya in their lives, or so could he have thought. Parched, he would stare at nothingness and believe it was his destiny after all.
Cricket, during these times, were his only respite. The only ray of light trying to peep inside a very dark tunnel.
Bowling fast was fun. It was also exhilarating. Perhaps, also a healthy way to let go of all the pent up anger and frustration.
Why couldn’t God be kinder? Why couldn’t he and his brother partake in the joys of life like some others did? Why had they been chosen to suffer those odds of misery?
He tried bowling faster. Run, sweat, de-stress, repeat. Cricket allowed him to breathe. It allowed him to dream, escape from realities that he didn’t mind facing but didn’t mind questioning either.
The Turnaround
Prying eyes watched this wiry young man from a distance. Bowls quick? Yes. Can he bat? A bit. Good enough to take a longer look? Why not!
The Mumbai Indians talent scouting team has been a game-changer in the IPL. The likes of John Wright and Kiran More among others have lent a keen eye in helping spot talent across the length and breadth of the country.
Spotting a young man from Vadodara bowl quick was just another day at work.
The year was 2014, when the Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament was on and a young Hardik ran in to bowl like he always did. Quick.
Oblivious to him, the talent scouts kept watching. They were looking to invite cricketers for their yearly trials and this bundle of energy from Vadodara was asked to join.
In hindsight, those were pretty much the weeks when his stars were beginning to realign. The next IPL auction would change life forever.
Year: 2015; Player Number: 278; Base price: Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million); Category: all-rounder. Mumbai Indians had found merit. They decided to write the cheque. Some buys are worth their weight in gold, except that in 2015, this may have neither dawned upon the player nor the franchise.
The Journey
It was the 43rd match of the IPL in 2015 in Chennai. The points table was getting more competitive as the tournament moved towards its business end.
The Super Kings had batted first, scored 158 and the Mumbai Indians were at a stage where every single win or loss would begin to matter.
Hardik was all over the field, taking three catches and bowling an over. Life, however, was about to change when it was MI’s turn to bat.
The visitors were 86-3 with eight overs (and 72 runs needed) remaining when he came out to bat. Three sixes, all straight up, and he walked back to shake hands with his team. The spot in the middle-order was about to get cemented.
Hardik began to realise potential at his newfound home. It wasn’t just the cricketing talent that made him a franchise favourite. It was this bundle of energy he carried around wherever he went that worked a charm.
Kieron Pollard thought Hardik had all the elements a proud Caribbean party-hopper needs to. Rohit Sharma gained an all-rounder. Shane Bond began to work on a potential fast bowler. MI found a batter who could step up anywhere in the top or middle-order. Success merely strengthened their bond.
The interesting bit is, Hardik had almost missed out on that game because of a bad catch in the neck. Five painkillers are what it took for him to walk out. He was determined.
“Two things matter to me in this life: The family I was born in, the family I was reborn in,” Hardik told me during the pandemic.
Until 2015, he had no idea where his next ‘big deal’ in life would be coming from. After 2015, he never had to ask where it would be coming from. Cricket always took care of it.
The debut tour of Australia would follow the next year, the T20 World Cup, more IPL titles, so on and so forth.
Life was changing, settling down. From the cover of fashion magazines to fancy television interviews, life began to move at such a quick pace that he had almost found little or no time to do what he had been yearning for a while now. To go back to those streets in Vadodara and show gratitude.
Thank you for everything
He had to go back some day and do what he must, he reminded himself. All those who had stood by him in his days of struggle, the grocer, the pharmacist, his extended family, friends.
Former India wicket-keeper Kiran More, for instance, who had waived off the fees at his academy in Vadodara, knowing that a young boy was tight on cash.
“They taught me what family means,” Hardik said of MI in the middle of a very emotional conversation during the first wave of the pandemic.
Stuck in his apartment in Vadodara during the lockdown, he kept finding ways to see if he could help. Sending out oxygen cylinders to a hospital in need, attending to requests, enquiring about people in distress and providing financial help. He tried to lend an arm wherever he could.
Then the first wave ended and the lockdown briefly got discontinued when Hardik requested his entire family to do something along with him. He asked them to accompany him around Vadodara to visit the shops and the shop owners who had in some way or the other stood by him during his time of need in those early years.
A word of thanks, a hug, a gift, a polite enquiry. He made sure he showed gratitude.
Talk to him and you’ll realise, how eternally grateful he’s been for all that God has blessed him with these last nine years.
The Homecoming
Two years ago, the BCCI decided to include two new franchises in the IPL. The decision was a long time coming but what it would do to the existing ecosystem hadn’t fully been taken into account until it actually happened.
The eight existing franchises would be given a choice to retain three Indians and two overseas players or two Indians and two overseas players and let go of the rest of the team so as to create a big pool of cricketers for the upcoming mega auction and ensure a level-playing field for the new teams coming in.
MI were in a dilemma. Rohit was their most prized possession and IPL’s most successful cricketer. Jasprit Bumrah’s bowling had made him irreplaceable. The top-order would have to be beefed up and Surya Kumar Yadav was the next big T20 star in the making. All four players retained couldn’t have been Indians and that ensured Pollard was staying back. A wicket-keeper would be needed because Quinton de Kock was being let go and Ishan Kishan had to come back at any price.
There was little the franchise could do and they were gutted. How could their valuable all-rounder, their home-grown asset simply leave overnight?
That’s when the resolve came. Mumbai Indians would wait the next three years before buying Hardik back. They had painfully stitched together a winning unit, and a rule – over which they had no say – forced them to dismantle it.
It wasn’t anybody’s fault. And yet, there were repairs to be made.
Hardik would perhaps make a request to Gujarat Titans ahead of the 2025 mega auctions to not retain him and make himself available for the Mumbai Indians to buy him from the auction or reserve a slot for him among the top category players beforehand.
Whichever way possible, the idea was to get back ‘home’.
How could he not be part of the very franchise that had polished a pebble into a precious stone. A franchise that bought him at the auction; helped him grow as a cricketer and an individual; helped him rise up the opportunity ladder and prosper; changed his life forever.
“That MI logo on the chest? That’s everything,” he never gets tired of mentioning.
He’d have returned to Mumbai next year if not for Gujarat Titans sensing a great opportunity in benefitting from a good business deal. The trade this week saw GT earn from Hardik’s sale back to the Mumbai Indians.
The result: MI got their player back, Hardik returned where he wanted to, GT profited from the trade, Cameron Green ended up making more money, Royal Challengers Bangalore got a player they wanted.
In the end, everybody went their respective ways a winner but in the middle of all the melee, Hardik came back home.
Home, where his heart has always been.
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