Indian cricket has seen plenty of Cinderella stories, but Hardik Pandya’s life story is one that could be a riveting Bollywood biopic someday. Pandya will be one of the central stars for the Indian cricket team in the upcoming Asia Cup tournament, with much expected from the all-rounder. He also captains the Mumbai Indians franchise in the cash-rich Indian Premier League. But life was not always this hunky-dory for the cricketer who saw his fair share of struggles in his early cricketing days.
As Mumbai Indians owner Nita Ambani had recently said, when she had first met the Pandya brothers, Hardik and Krunal, they were surviving on a diet of only Maggi.
“When scouting for talent, I used to go to Ranji Trophy matches with scouts. One day, our scouts brought two young and lanky boys. I was talking to them, and they said that for three years, they’ve eaten nothing but Maggi noodles because they’ve had no money,” Amabani had said recently in an interview. “But in them, I saw the spirit, the passion and the hunger that they wanted to make it big. In 2015, I bought Hardik Pandya at 10 thousand US dollars in the auction, and today, he’s the proud captain of Mumbai Indians,” she said.
Hardik Pandya had himself opened up on his less fortunate days when money was short in supply. He said that both brothers would eat Maggi from morning to night, rather than an athlete’s diet.
“There was a time when my diet was Maggi. I was a huge Maggi fan. But it was a combination of being a fan and the situation I was in. At that time, I loved Maggi, and it was also very difficult to afford a proper diet because of financial problems. Healthy diets are expensive. Now I can afford it, and I can eat whatever I want for my body’s needs, but at that time, there were many financial problems. I would eat it in the morning and at night. I would eat Maggi before going to the ground and also when I came home. The whole match was played on a Maggi diet,” Hardik Pandya had once said in an interview for a show called What The Duck with Vikram Sathaye.
The paradox of pride: A car but no kit
Hardik Pandya also revealed that there were days when they played on kits borrowed from the state cricket association while they were driving around in a car. He explained how there was a misconception in state cricket circles due to the paradox of owning a new car but needing to take kits from the association.
“Krunal and I had a motto: never to seek sympathy from anyone, no matter what. If we are doing well, be strong; if we are not, also be strong. Back in those days we had to borrow our cricket equipment. We had taken our entire kit from the BCA (Baroda Cricket Association) for a year. I was 17, and Krunal was maybe 19. But we owned a car back in those days. People had a huge misconception about it. It raised many questions because people saw us in a car but wondered why we were taking a kit. They knew I had a car but didn’t know the situation at home. We had financial problems.
“The reason was that we had just bought the car, and then my father, who was the sole earning member in our family, suddenly had two heart attacks in one night, and had another heart scare six months later, but we reached the hospital on time. Our financial problems started there. My father was the only source of income, and you can’t expect him to work after the attacks. We had just bought the car and never had any savings. We were like a ‘royal family’: whatever we earned, we spent—sometimes more than we earned.