After a hat-trick of defeat in the ongoing Indian Premier League, the newly appointed skipper of five-time IPL trophy winning franchise Mumbai Indians – Hardik Pandya – is under the scanner and being criticized by experts.
Considered as one of the richest franchise in the IPL tournament, Mumbai Indians have till now failed to open their account, losing all the three matches played – against Gujarat Titans, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals.
Apart from losing matches, the team is also facing ire of the fans for dropping Rohit Sharma as skipper and appointing Hardik Pandya as the leader of the pack.
What experts say:
India’s former all-rounder Irfan Pathan too launched a scathing attack on him and questioned Pandya’s captaincy skills.
Pathan took to X and wrote, “You always want your Leader to do the difficult things. If he doesn’t do it he won’t earn his team’s respect.”
With fans seeking Rohit to return as skipper for Mumbai Indians, former Indian cricketer and renowned commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu cited the reason why fans were not happy. He believed that the whole saga was related to Rohit Sharma, the captain of the Indian national team.
“Nobody can digest that their hero, the India captain, is not the captain of the franchise. What wrong has he done?” he asked.
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Giving his expert advice to Pandya, Sidhu said, “There is nothing that succeeds like success. If Mumbai Indians had won the last two games, everyone would have been silent. I think he (Pandya) should focus on the team combination.”
Hardik’s reply:
However, Hardik took to social media to post an inspirational message stating they will bounce back stronger.
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Taking to X, the Mumbai Indians captain said: “If there’s one thing you should know about this team, we never give up. We’ll keep fighting, we’ll keep going.”
Mumbai Indians faced the third defeat on Monday on their home ground Wankhede Stadium, as Royals beat them 6 wickets. Now, find themselves at the bottom of the IPL 2024 points table with zero points and a net run rate of -1.423.
Speaking after the match at the post-presentation ceremony, Pandya had said, “Yes, a tough night, we didn’t start the way we wanted to start. I wanted to counter, we were in a decent position to get us around 150-160, but my wicket allowed them to get back more into the game, I needed to do a lot more. It’s okay, we didn’t expect such a surface, but you can’t always have it as a batter, it’s nice at times for the bowlers to have a say.”
“It’s all about doing the right things, (correct) results happen at times, at some other times it doesn’t. As a group, we believe we can do a lot better, but we need to be a bit more disciplined and show a lot more courage,” he added.
But for upset fans, they should also remember that in 2015, MI lost the first four matches before winning the IPL trophy that year.
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