Apart from cricket matches, one of the most talked-about points in this year’s IPL is the captaincy saga of the Mumbai Indians. Ever since Hardik Pandya replaced Rohit Sharma as captain of the Mumbai Indians, he has not been a fan favorite. The crowd booed Hardik Pandya in whichever venue he played.
Reacting to the same Former Australian great Mathew Hayden is not quite happy with the way the transition is going for the Mumbai Indians. He believes that Rohit Sharma would have known before the franchise took such a big decision.
In his interaction with Star Sports, Matthew Hayden said, “See, the fans are the biggest stakeholders in this, and they often don’t have the politics or the insights, but they want to understand this; they love Rohit Sharma.
There’s going to be no getting around that. So potentially, how it could have been handled a little bit differently is to ensure that Rohit is on board with it; the franchise is communicating it out to the fans through social media platforms that announce a lot of these things, and they actually carry a lot of weight.”
Hayden also gave the example of the Chennai Super Kings when Ravindra Jadeja was made the captain of the side in place of Ms. Dhoni. There was not much controversy regarding the decision made by Franchise.
Hayden said, “You got to have a succession plan, and you’ve seen the same thing with CSK last season, didn’t we? When Jaddu came into the captaincy, it didn’t quite work for them, so maybe there is an opportunity to reassess. There are some concerns in and around Hardik’s leadership, but I think it’s grossly unfair to look at the start of the season, which is notoriously slow for the Mumbai Indians, and judge one of the iconic cricketers in India and will be for a long time to come as well, subject to his own fitness, which is always vulnerable being an all-rounder as he is. But it’s grossly unfair to misjudge his performances so far and the team’s performances and then speculate around what is and what isn’t happening inside that changing room, which we don’t.”.
