Mumbai Indians (MI) captain Hardik Pandya didn’t get a dreamy begin to his IPL 2024 marketing campaign, dropping the opening match to Gujarat Titans (GT) on Sunday evening. He confronted brutal on-line trolling all through the match and acquired booeing too from the Ahmedabad crowd. He captained GT for 2 seasons, taking them to a title win within the maiden season and until finals the second time. His choice to go away GT for MI has not gone down nicely with the Gujarat followers who confirmed their disappointment by booeing the MI captain on the toss.
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On social media, Hardik acquired hate for ‘ordering’ former captain Rohit Sharma to area within the deep. Fans put out their anger on social media over how Hardik led as they might see an perspective drawback with Hardik. After the match, a heated chat between Rohit and Hardik added gasoline to the fireplace.
Coming to Hardik’s captaincy, there was nothing a lot to remove from it. He gained the toss and opted to bowl first and the bowlers delivered too, proscribing GT to 168 for six in 20 overs. But as a batting unit, MI failed. They couldn’t chase the goal regardless of being in a commanding place proper from the beginning and former India bowler Irfan Pathan blamed it on MI.
Irfan stated that Hardik ought to have come on to bat sooner than he did, dealing with the likes of Rashid Khan himself. But it appears, Irfan says, Hardik was avoiding dealing with Rashid. Irfan identified different areas too the place Hardik faltered as captain on Day 1 as MI skipper.
“When he came to bowl in the powerplay, he bowled 2 overs himself, that was one mistake. Second mistake was he sent Tim David ahead of him during the chase even when Rashid Khan had one over left. I felt Hardik did not want to face Rashid as he has not played cricket for a long time. Maybe that was one reason. I cannot see any logic otherwise that an Indian international batter, who has so much experience of batting in such situation, sitting in the dressing room and an overseas batter is sent to bat in a pressure situation,” stated Irfan.
MI now fly to Hyderabad to face Sunrisers on March 27. Hardik feels they’ll make a powerful comeback within the subsequent sport. They made some errors and must study shortly to bounce again.
