"Mind gets tired" - Hardik Pandya speaks at length after losing captaincy to Suryakumar Yadav

Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya made his first public appearance after announcing his divorce from Natasa Stankovic and losing captaincy to Suryakumar Yadav. The Mumbai Indians captain talked about the importance of fitness and claimed that everyone should start pushing their barrier every single day.

The past few days have been quite tough for the Indian all-rounder. Hardik Pandya after being the team's important member in the T20 World Cup 2024, has faced quite a few setbacks both in his career as well as in his personal life, which had made him the talk of the town.

Hardik Pandya, who was the vice-captain of the Indian team in the T20 World Cup 2024 and was expected to become the permanent captain of India, wasn't considered for the role. The BCCI and the head coach Gautam Gambhir were not in favour of him leading the team because of his injury history and workload management.

In his place, Suryakumar Yadav was appointed as the T20I captain and Hardik Pandya also lost the vice-captaincy. Youngster Shubman Gill was appointed as the new vice-captain of the team in the white-ball formats and it talks about the long-term goals of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

On the personal front, Hardik Pandya announced a divorce with Natasa Stankovic. He through a social media post made the announcement. After that, the all-rounder made his first public appearance on Saturday (20th July) at the launch of his sports apparel brand. Hardik Pandya talked about the fitness and stated (as per PTI):

"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 would tell my body to just push because you will always have extra effort in your body. 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,"

"The point that it is very, very important to sometimes 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. And that has pushed my limits and I think slowly, everyone who wants to start with a fitness journey should focus on that."

"Start pushing your barrier every single day - Hardik Pandya

Hardik Pandya further stressed how pushing in fitness helped him to increase his pace. The all-rounder while elaborating on pushing through the limits stated:

"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. I never knew what fitness would do to me, but it's just that I felt that I always wanted to be No. 1 in everything I did, so in a habit, 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.

"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."

Hardik Pandya has been named in the Indian team for the T20I series against Sri Lanka. But he has been rested for the ODIs. The India tour to Sri Lanka will begin with a T20I series on 27th July.