I was confident they would come back stronger, says Ravi Shastri about Rahul and Pandya

We all remember how Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul got into major trouble after they made an appearance on Karan Johar’s talk show named ‘Koffee with Karan’. The Star World show that was aired on January 6 took social media by storm as the duo received intense backlash after they made misogynistic comments. India was touring Australia when the news broke out and despite Hardik and Rahul apologizing for their comments, the BCCI showed no mercy and imposed provisional suspensions on both the players.

As a result, Pandya missed out on participating in the three-match ODI series that followed the Test series and was replaced by Vijay Shankar.  However, India’s head coach Ravi Shastri has now revealed that he knew that despite the fiasco the players would make a strong comeback.

The two players were even slammed by former Indian cricketers Sunil Gavaskar and Harbhajan Singh for their controversial statements which were branded as ‘male chauvinistic’ by many. Bhajji went as far as to say that he wouldn’t want his family to be around the players.

After all the outrage, Pandya finally made his comeback after his ban was lifted during the New Zealand tour, and did decently well before being ruled out the following home series against Australia due to injury.

You learn from your mistakes

Meanwhile, KL Rahul played for India A against the England Lions and then made a comeback to India’s T20I team for the Australia series. 

It is clear that the duo has been able to surpass the shadows of the infamous talk show episode and Ravi Shastri is very positive about it especially since the next venture is the ICC Cricket World Cup, which starts on May 30. According to News 18, Ravi Shastri was quoted saying, “See, you learn from your mistakes, you learn from adversities. And I said at that time, they’ll come back tougher, stronger and wiser and I can see that with the both of them.”

IPL 2019 was also memorable for them. Playing for the Mumbai Indians, the champions of IPL 2019, Hardik Pandya produced multiple match-winning innings and amassed 402 runs in 15 outings.  And Rahul piled runs for the Kings XI Punjab and finished as their leading run scorer with 593 runs in 14 innings and only second to David Warner(692 runs) in the Orange Cap race.

Both the players would now hope to replicate a similar kind of form in the World Cup and help Team India win the trophy for the third time.

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