Abdul Razzaq warns Hardik Pandya while citing Mohammad Amir’s example

Pakistan’s legendary all-rounder Abdul Razzaq issued a warning to India’s all-rounder Hardik Pandya that his performances would dip without hard, work while citing fast-bowler Mohammad Amir as an example to make his case.

The 40-year-old urged the Indian star to prepare both physically and mentally while calling him a good player.

"Pandya is a good player but he can be a much better all-rounder. It is all about hard work. When you don't give enough time to the game, it drifts away from you," Razzaq told Press Trust of India. "He has to prepare better mentally as well as physically. As you have seen, he has been getting injured a lot of late (underwent back surgery last year). When you earn a lot of money, you tend to relax. For every player it is the same. Mohammad Amir did not work hard enough and his performance dipped."

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Razzaq believes that Pandya was nowhere near the legendary all-rounder of the previous eras such as Imran Khan and Kapil Dev.

"Kapil Dev and Imran Khan are the best all-rounders of all time. Hardik is nowhere near that league. Even I was an all-rounder but it doesn't mean that I would compare myself with Imran bhai. Kapil paaji and Imran bhai were in a different league," he said.

The former all-rounder claimed that cricket had stopped producing world-class players as opposed to 10 to 15 years ago.

"You don't feel the same pressure facing the current crop of pacers. Overall, there is a bad patch in world cricket. We are not producing world-class players the way we used to 10-15 years ago. You had Tendulkar, Zaheer, Sehwag, Ganguly in the same team. They would have walked into any team. Maybe too much T20 cricket is responsible for this decline," he said.