The flamboyant Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya has revealed that he went through a lot of “mental pressure” when he was going through the rehabilitation of his back injury and the things weren’t going in the right direction. He had undergone a successful surgery in October last year to treat an acute lower-back injury, because of which he missed the cricketing action for six months.

Pandya played his last ODI against New Zealand in the World Cup semi-final in Manchester and his last international match was a T20I against the Proteas in Bengaluru in September last year. Pandya is now ready to make an international comeback after being included in India’s ODI squad to take on South Africa.

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Talking on ‘Chahal TV’ ahead of the series opener, Pandya said, “I missed this atmosphere in these past six months, playing for India and the feeling that you get wearing the team’s colours. That had become a mental challenge and there were a lot of setbacks. I was trying to get back to full fitness quickly but that did not work out and there was a lot of mental pressure at that time. But everything went fine, the rehabilitation went well and a lot of people helped me.”

WATCH: CHAHAL TV with the comeback man Hardik Pandya 😎😎

In this segment, @hardikpandya7 talks about his rehabilitation, how much he missed donning Indian colours and shares his message for #TeamIndia fans 💪🙌- by @28anand & @yuzi_chahal

Full video 👉 https://t.co/9PvNu3R0gr pic.twitter.com/DFl2CzBtdu

— BCCI (@BCCI) March 12, 2020

Last month, Hardik was ruled out of the Test series against New Zealand after failing to regain complete match fitness but was included in the squad earlier. He finally made comeback to competitive cricket when he played for the Reliance 1 team in the DY Patil T20 Cup, an invitational tournament.

Pandya scored two centuries, the second of which was an unbeaten 55-ball 158 in which he smashed 20 sixes. He said it was an “important innings” for him.

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Talking about the importance of the T20 cup, Hardik said, “I had not played a single game for six and a half months. I wanted to make an international comeback so it was very important for my confidence. No matter how much you practice the match situation is always different. So I just kept on playing, my confidence kept improving and the sixes were coming of well. I thought if they are coming off well, why should I stop and I keep going. But I never thought that I will hit 20 sixes in an innings.”