Manish Pandey - The New Manoj Tiwary?

Natural talent is a huge quality to have in any sport and cricket is no different but like every sport, there are teams in cricket who strive for talented players and there are teams who do not know how to use them. Back in 2009, when the technically sound batsman Manish Pandey  batting as an opener,became the first Indian batsman to score a century in IPL he would have expected an easy road ahead. Eight years later, he finds himself struggling to make into India's T20I side as a lower order batsman while his place in ODI and Test sides is all but confirmed.

Since scoring a century in IPL he has grown as an aggressive top order batsman who can bind his team and lead it to victory. He even became a part of rising dominance of his domestic team Karnataka when they won double treble. All  this meant he was a perfect billing for a stroke player anywhere in top 4. He was seen as a replacement of Yuvraj Singh by many since he has all capabilities to succeed at that number. He is without a doubt a match winner as he showed last year when he helped India chase 330 at Sydney against Australia.

Team management needs to realize Pandey's potential as a top order batsman  © Getty Images

Everything said, it is no rocket science to know that his batting is more successful in the top order regardless of the format of the game and many fans were rightly left complaining when they saw Manish Pandey coming in at #6 that too in a T20I match in a situation that demanded him to go full monty from the first ball, something he is never been used to. Indian cricket team is no alien to wasting talents. One such name that springs to the mind from the recent times is Manoj Tiwary. Tiwary like Pandey is an aggressive middle order batsman with extraordinary consistency at the first class level.  His good season in IPL meant that he was seen as a swashbuckling strokeplayer despite his record proving him to be more suitable for long format. To save his place, he changed his technique to be more suitable for the short formats as the situation required but that happened to ruin his natural ability as a batsman and after a few failures to adapt to the new role, he was left out from the team. While Tiwary still remains as one of the best batsmen around at domestic level, he is very unlikely to get a call up from the national team any time soon.

Thankfully though for Pandey, it seems that finally some of the cricket critics have got it and have come out with the request to the team management to send him up the order instead of Raina and this is most likely to be the move to happen in the series decider third match on Wednesday.