Young guns Nitish Rana and Krunal Pandya played phenomenal innings for Mumbai Indians. They helped their team to outplay the past defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad on Wednesday. After younger brother Hardik Pandya’s heroics against KKR, Krunal got determined to perform better and his cameo of 37 off 20 balls helped MI to seal the match against SRH.
Krunal was picked by Mumbai Indians for IPL 2016, the same team which his brother represents. Despite the fact that he hasn’t been a big name in the domestic circuit, still, he has done enough to emerge as a surprise pick in the auction.
The southpaw was born in the year 1991, in the beautiful city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. But in order to help his children make a better career, his father moved to Vadodara in 1999. Since then, the Pandya Brothers along with their family live in Baroda.
Krunal’s career
Krunal is the slow left-arm orthodox bowler and also a left-handed batsman. He made his List A debut in Ahmedabad in a Vijay Hazare against Gujarat on November 8, 2014. The left-armer made his T20 debut on March 26, 2013, against Bengal in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy at IndoreHe has taken his coaching under former Indian cricketer Kiran More and Jitender Singh.
The left-hander is trained under the guidance of former Indian cricketer Kiran More and Jitender Singh. In the 15 T20 matches he had played, he went on to take as many as 16 wickets in 15 T20 matches and scored 167 runs at a strike rate of 138.01. This shows his ability to perform in both the departments.
IPL franchise Mumbai Indian picked Krunal for a price of Rs. 2 crores in the auction of 2016 which was 20 times his base price of 10 lakhs.
Krunal’s family was settled in Surat with his father running a successful car business. But after looking at his son’ passion towards cricket, Krunal’ father shift base to Baroda since Surat had no good cricket opportunities back then. He joined the famous Kiran More Cricket Academy there.
Since his childhood, Krunal was into cricket but his brother Hardik wasn’t. Kiran More spotted Hardik once when he was just playing around when Krunal was practicing. Soon after that More asked Hardik to come for practice from the next day.
Krunal hasn’t been much lucky about his fortunes in his career. While, Hardik took big steps in his career but due to a shoulder injury, Krunal had to take a long halt. After the injury, he decided to lead a more disciplined life. He had quit all unwanted things in his life, even he left smoking after that blow.
