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The national selectors apparently have a plan for the 2019 World Cup and they want to rotate a set of players in the next five months before finalising the squad. The home team seemed to have lost their will to fight. The Indian captain seemed to have picked up Nitish Kumars taunt of the Opposition, to be proactive, not reactive!Thats what Kohli wants to be as captain. He is also a livewire in the field and that completes his role. Some of the ‘rested ones are going to play County Cricket to prepare for Indias tour of England next year!All this is part of the selectors and Kohlis plans.It is not Pandyas hundred but the way he got it proves Kohlis point.As for his bowling, there is something unique about it.If Sri Lankas batting looked pedantic, their bowling was pedestrian. He got his hundred in the company of the two Yadavs, Kuldeep, playing only in his second Test, and last man Umesh, both in the team as bowlers.How does Pandya fit into the Kohlis scheme of things? If the captain wants a genuine fifth bowler he had Ishant Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar and if he looking at a pure batsman he had Rohit Sharma, all well experienced at Test level.It was Mahendra Singh Dhoni who saw some spark in Pandya and he must have clearly passed on his impressions about the Gujarat youngman to his successor Virat Kohli for careful nursing.He made Pandya bat at number 8 behind Ashwin and Saha and bowl him not as a third seamer but as a fifth bowler after running through his mainline exponents.India could only make do with bowlers who wielded the bat to get good runs, they all happen to be spinners like Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Ravichandran Ashwin who all have Test hundreds to their name, the last two more than one.

Stats always make hundreds that much more exciting, Pandyas coming in 86 balls and he smote seven sixes. There are no half measures with him, he hits straight and clean, connecting most of his shots with the middle of the bat. The views expressed are personal. All won by big margins, the first one by 304 runs and the next two by an innings.Kohli, an unabashed admirer of Dhoni, has taken the cue and is willing to invest time and effort in making Pandya a worthwhile all-rounder. He is going out of his way to promote him.Now both the selectors and the Indian team management think that Pandya has the mettle to be the all-rounder they are looking for.By Veturi SrivatsaThe Sri Lankan series, on thought, is done and dusted once India wrapped it up in Colombo, winning the second Test to take a 2-0 lead. They will have to regroup if they have to start winning at home. Pandya was born five months before Kapil ended his international cricket career in March 1994. After his first three Tests, he appears to be a batting all-rounder who can bend his back with the ball.Pandyas hard hitting is all too well-known, after his exploits in the IPL and the way he batted in the few matches he played in the shorter formats. He looks like taking wicket anytime, producing an unplayable delivery with his quick pace and line. He can be reached at [emailprotected])IANSvs/gau/vmPost Source: Ians feed. Not so, with young Hardik Pandya pumping life into the third and last Test at Pallekele with his exciting all-round showing. In the all-rounders category comes the wicket-keeper and Wriddhiman Saha is fulfilling tha batsmans role quite efficiently.Kohli, however, was firm on playing Pandya and he was clearly the happiest man when the 23-year-old smashed his first fifty in the first Test and a hundred in the third.

There are already headlines hailing Pandya as the new Kapil Dev, unfair to the young man who has not watched the great stalwart bat or bowl.The selectors dropped or rested seven players from the side that played in the West Indies.Ever since Kapil Dev left the international cricket scene, the lament has been that the Indian team doesnt have an all-rounder of his class, knowing fully well such stars do not get on to a cricket field all that frequently. Such clean hitting in Tests is not done or seen all too often. Come to think of it, this is his first first-class hundred, though there were four other Indians before him to do the same, including Kapil Dev.The Sri Lankans have an opportunity to bounce back psychologically by putting up a sterner fight in the five-match One-Day series starting next week.(Veturi Srivatsa is a senior journalist.India winning the series, their eighth in a row and lotion pump Manufacturers 3-0 at that, for the first time overseas, was never in doubt, looking at the overall strength of the Sri Lankan side. He made no secret of his delight for getting vindicated.