'Project Pandya' provides a peek into the future. The skills developed by Hardicc in T20s pays off in Test cricket.

I don't have to reason my way out of it. He's not a Test cricketer, period. His MOM and recent shenanigans have convinced you that he is. I fully respect that. I absolutely don't want you to change your mind.

But I have not seen enough substance to convince myself that he's a good Test cricketer. I have the right to a different opinion than you. And I am open to anybody trying to get me to change my view or “see the light” as you'd say but that has to happen through a logical argument, likes of which I haven't encountered here at all.

Somebody mentioned statistics here, so I'd like to elaborate my take. There is a concept in statistics called regression to the mean. Read up on it, it's fascinating. It says that given a sufficiently large sample space, things tend to regress to the mean. We see this in sports all the time. A player is never permanently out of form, nor he is permanently in form. After playing really well, he will eventually regress back to his “mean ability” and likewise when he is out of form. Ponting, Sachin, Lara, Yuvraj, all have had phases of exceptional brilliance and remarkable slumps along their careers. There's no meaningful way we can distinguish them when they played their best game. Was Ponting of mid 2000s really any worse than Sachin? So what‘s of interest to me is players “mean ability” not their peak, because peaks don't last. In cricketing parlance, we have to call “mean ability” class, if the mean ability is exceptionally high. Hence I refrain from judging players based on a handful performances - high or low. A season worth of performances, when looked at in the right context, provide a much better picture than a one-off triple century.

I am not asking anyone to not believe that Pandya is a Test cricketer. I am not saying he can't become one, I am saying he's not one right now. And the burden of proof is not on me. Any player picked at random is more likely to be average than exceptional/Test-class. So if we were to pick say Pandya and I were to say he's average, and you were to disagree, the onus is on YOU to prove why he's better than average. There's not enough data to prove he's great so we do what all intelligent men do and start with the more likely assumption that he is average, watch his play for a season or two and correct our analysis later.

Don't hail your players as greats before they have even made a difference. That's all I ever said. It was just more succinct.

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