Talking on his YouTube channel, the previous South African batter expressed issues about Pandya’s management model, suggesting it lacked genuineness.
De Villiers remarked, “The captaincy model of Hardik Pandya is sort of bravado. It is ego-driven in a manner, chest out. I do not suppose how he walks on the sphere is all the time real, however he has determined that’s his manner of captaincy. Nearly like MS (Dhoni). Cool, calm, collective, all the time acquired your chest out.”Citing his personal experiences enjoying below Graeme Smith‘s management, de Villiers emphasised the significance of authenticity in management, significantly when working with skilled gamers. He recalled Smith’s selfless method to management, contrasting it with Pandya’s extra assertive model.
“Once you play with a variety of skilled gamers, guys who’ve been round for ages, they do not purchase into that. It labored at GT, the place it was a youthful workforce. Typically, inexperienced gamers like to comply with that type of management,” de Villiers defined.
“Now, there’s Rohit (Sharma), there’s (Jasprit) Bumrah. They go like, ‘All we want you to be is calm. Give us a little bit of enter on win matches. We do not want the bravado’,” de Villiers added.
Regardless of his critique, de Villiers clarified that he admired Pandya’s on-field skills and revered his method to the sport. He acknowledged that whereas Pandya’s management model could not align with everybody’s preferences, it mirrored his personal beliefs and motivations.
“I am not having a go at Hardik. I really like watching him play. I really like him placing out his chest as a result of I used to be like that,” de Villiers concluded. “I believed that as a batter, generally, you have to faux it to make it.”