The flamboyant Mumbai Indians (MI) all-rounder, Hardik Pandya took a knee for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement during the game against the Rajasthan Royals (RR) at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. The right-hander got his form back with his unbeaten knock of 60 off just 21 balls with the help of two fours and seven colossal hits out of the park.
Pandya came out to bat in the 14th over and didn’t waste any time whatsoever to get going as he started smashing the RR bowlers at a fiery strike-rate of 285.71, taking the Royals bowling to the cleaners. On the back of his stupendous efforts, MI managed to reach a humongous total of 195 for the loss of five wickets in their 20 overs.
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However, his knock went in vain as Steve Smith’s RR won the game by eight wickets. Ben Stokes went on to smash his second IPL century and guided his team over the finishing line. Coming back to Hardik, he showed his support for the BLM movement after completing his half-century.
Here’s Hardik Pandya’s post:
#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/yzUS1bWh7F
— hardik pandya (@hardikpandya7) October 25, 2020
As far as the BLM movement is concerned, it has been doing the rounds for quite a while. Jason Holder, who’s with the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), was, however, a bit disappointed after Pakistan and Australia’s tour of England followed by the IPL didn’t put much emphasis on the BLM saga.
Ecpressing his thoughts the decreasing importance of the BLM movement, Holder said, “I was following a little bit of what Michael Holding was saying regarding the Pakistan and Australia tours, which followed ours. It’s difficult to be able to get people to see the importance of it, and that’s where the education has to be filtered through. It’s really important people understand where we as black people are coming from, and understand the harsh reality of how the world is set up.”
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He further added, “There are inequalities out there, some of them are very much in our faces, some are done discretely, but there are inequalities and I think it’s just a level of education. To be honest I haven’t had one conversation up here around it. Sometimes it seems it has gone unnoticed, which is a sad thing. I guess it’s for us to re-highlight the importance of it, for people to understand what is happening in the world.”
