Achi news desk-
Four months have passed since the Mumbai Indians made the official announcement of replacing Hardik Pandya with Rohit Sharma as their captain. An auction took place about a week later and now we are in the middle of the league stage of IPL 2024. But “Why did Mumbai Indians replace Rohit Sharma with Hardik Pandya?” The question is still seeking answers among the MI faithful. You can’t really blame them, can you? Rohit, after all is the first captain to win five IPL titles. He is the franchise’s highest run-scorer by some distance and is largely the face of their turnaround in the IPL after five disappointing seasons since its inception in 2008.
So what was the need? Rohit was still strong. He is still the Indian captain in all formats. So why? Even as MI fans try to find an answer to this tough question, former India cartoon Robin Uthappa has come up with an explanation. Othapa said there are three perspectives that need to be judged to understand the whole situation. The first is of the franchise – MI. The second is of Hardik Pandya, the new captain and the third is of Rohit Sharma, the former skipper.
Uthappa said MI appointed Rohit as its captain midway through the 2013 season, displacing Australian legend Ricky Ponting. This decision was accepted with open arms by the senior team and the fans.
“Hardik Pandya is their discovery. They did it through their scouting methods. So they are basically looking at a pure Mumbai Indians kid. When the captaincy was given to Rohit Sharma it was taken away from Ricky Ponting in the middle of the season. It’s the same franchise. All the senior guys Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhaj N Singh and Ricky Ponting supported Rohit,” Uthappa said on the TRS podcast.
Rohit’s form as a batsman and captain was not good, MI had to look for other options
Uthappa said that statistically, Rohit hasn’t had fun with the bat in the last three or four years and since MI haven’t won a title since 2020. They should have thought of a change.
In the last four years, statistically… I will never doubt the caliber and magnificence of Rohit Sharma the batsman. But look at it from a franchise point of view. They won in 2020. They haven’t won in the last three years. And in the last three years, Rohit has scored less than 300 runs (only once). So there is lack of success as a batsman, lack of success as a captain. Only in the IPL target anywhere else, he has scored runs,” Uthappa added.
Rohit hasn’t had a 400-plus IPL season since 2019. He had the worst season of his IPL career in 2022, scoring just 268 runs at an average of 19 and a strike rate of 120. MI finished at the bottom of the points table for the first time in IPL history with Just two wins in 14 games the next year, they did make the playoffs, but Rohit’s performance with the bat was still not up to his standards. He managed 332 runs at a strike rate of 132.
Uthappa said MI may have decided to explore other options at the end of last year’s IPL, but the narrative may have changed in the minds of fans after the kind of success the opener achieved in the ODI World Cup both as captain and captain. in line at night
“So there’s a reason MI landed on this consensus that maybe we should look beyond Rohit. Maybe that conversation was created at the end of last season. They might have conversations in different directions. Then Rohit Sharman’s success in the ODI World Cup came within reach. His greatness as a player and a leader was there for all to see.
“The narrative has been blown up in the air but hasn’t landed yet, but for Mumbai Indians it landed last year itself, maybe. From their point of view, they felt they were right. If you look at how they acted in the past, how they act now, it’s the same. They were consistent, so how can you blame them?”
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by the Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
