Hardik Pandya's smartness proved costly, he showed his attitude towards Arshdeep Singh and then caused a loss to Team India.

Team India had to face defeat in the second T20 match against South Africa. Team India, which had scored a big score by batting explosively in Durban, collapsed for just 124 runs in Port Elizabeth. South Africa also had to struggle to reach here but still achieved the target in 19 overs. Although the failure of Team India's top order was the main reason for this defeat, Hardik Pandya's intelligence also proved costly for the team, who scored the most runs but also made mistakes in the last overs, due to which the team missed adding some more runs to the score.

Batting first, the Indian team lost the wickets of explosive batsmen like Sanju Samson, captain Suryakumar Yadav, and Rinku Singh early. 4 wickets fell for just 45 runs, after which Hardik Pandya came to the crease. Meanwhile, Akshar Patel scored runs quickly by hitting some shots but Hardik Pandya was seen struggling. Then with Akshar being run out and Rinku Singh's wicket also falling, all the responsibility fell on Hardik, who hit the first boundary of his innings on the 28th ball.

What did Hardik say to Arshdeep?

There were not many batsmen to stay with Hardik at the crease and Arshdeep Singh came with him at the crease from the 16th over. In such a situation, the entire responsibility of scoring runs was on him. Hardik also played some shots but still, it was not as per the requirement. Then something happened in the 19th over, which later became the reason for criticism of Hardik. Arshdeep took 1 run on the second ball of this over and Hardik came on strike. It was here that Hardik told Arshdeep to stand at the other end and enjoy the show.

This was broadcast through the stump mic and everyone heard it on TV. Now what Hardik meant to say was that Arshdeep should keep watching and enjoy him hitting boundaries but exactly the opposite happened. Hardik could not score a single run in the next 3 balls and kept the strike with himself by taking 1 run of leg bye on the last ball. Then the same thing happened in the 20th over and Hardik could not hit any boundary in the first 4 balls, while he refused to run a single 3 times.

Team India suffered loss.

In the end, Hardik did score 2 runs on the 5th ball and a four on the last ball but in this process, Team India lost many runs. It was not that Arshdeep was a very experienced batsman but while batting first, every run is important and Arshdeep had anyway scored 7 runs in 6 balls which included a six. Now if Hardik had rotated the strike, perhaps some more runs would have been added to the score and Team India would have been saved from defeat. Hardik scored only 39 runs in 45 balls.