Hardik Pandya web ST

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India’s second squad under the leadership of Hardik Pandya is currently in Ireland for a two-match T20I series. After thrashing the hosts in the first match, India are taking on Ireland in the second match in a bid to win the series. Hardik Pandya once again won the toss and chose to bat first this time. While Ireland persisted with the same XI, India made as many as three changes.

Ruturaj Gaikwad, Avesh Khan, and Yuzvendra Chahal were the players to be left out of the playing eleven and were replaced by Sanju Samson, Harshal Patel, and Ravi Bishnoi respectively. With Samson finally getting a game, fans welcomed the team’s decision. The loud cheer from the crowd at the stadium when Samson’s name was announced was enough to testify that.

As soon as India captain Hardik Pandya announced Samson’s name, the crowd started cheering loudly. Such was the intensity of the cheer that Pandya had to stop talking. When the cheer went down, Pandya reacted by saying that “A lot of people are liking it”.

Watch the video here:

Samson gets off to a flying start!

With the crowd totally behind him, Samson started his innings with a boundary. On the very first ball of the first over, Samson got a boundary off Mark Adair. Although it came off the outside edge, the crowd loved every bit of it. The batter then scored his second boundary but this time in a more convincing manner. Samson slapped a short delivery from Joshua Little towards the long-on region for a boundary.

The right-handed batter then kept winning the crowd with his elegant shorts in the middle. For his third boundary, Samson creamed a cover drive off the bowling of Craig Young in the fourth over of India’s innings. The batter then finished the powerplay on a high as he nailed two boundaries in the sixth over. With the help of his classy boundaries, Samson raced to 28* off 23 balls in the first eight overs.