Remove all-rounder tag from Hardik Pandya: Harbhajan Singh

After seeing India's disappointing performance in the ongoing England-India Test series, Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh has slammed Hardik Pandya in an interview on Aaj Tak for his poor performances in red-ball cricket.

Harbhajan went on to compare Pandya with the English all-rounders Ben Stokes, Sam Curran and Chris Woakes and stated how Hardik lacked the ability to win matches for India. Stokes and Curran turned the match in England's favour in the first Test while Woakes single-handedly won the second Test with his unbeaten century.

Hardik has scored just 90 runs in the four innings that he has batted in this series while taking three wickets. "Scoring 90 runs as a batsman is not sufficient, while in bowling, the skipper Virat Kohli doesn't use him as a wicket-taking option," Harbhajan explained about the 24-year-old.

"If he continues to play like this, then this is not only going to affect him only but the performance of the entire Indian team as well in future," the spinner told AajTak.

Many cricketing experts have also claimed that just to fit Pandya into the side, the balance of the entire team has to suffer. And as a result, the team can neither play an extra batsman nor an extra bowler.

During the tour of South Africa as well, Pandya managed to score just a single fifty and failed to provide a match-winning performance for his team.

After a narrow defeat in the first Test at Edgbaston, India suffered a humiliating loss in the second Test match against England by a margin of an innings and 159 runs. Hardik tried to defend that loss by attributing it to the bad luck of losing the toss and batting first in overcast conditions.

Pandya has represented India in nine Test matches so far and scored 458 runs at an average of 32.71 while he has taken just 10 wickets with the ball.