Ritika Sajdeh does not agree with what Mark Boucher had to say about Mumbai Indians’ decision to sack Rohit Sharma as their captain ahead of IPL 2024.
Ritika Sajdeh has quashed Mark Boucher’s justification of removing Rohit Sharma as captain of the Mumbai Indians ahead of IPL 2024. Rohit, on December 15 2023, was replaced by Hardik Pandya as the new captain of MI, with Boucher on Monday, explaining the reason behind it. However, it turns out that Ritika, Rohit’s wife, does not agree with what the former South Africa wicketkeeper had to say on the matter and called it out on Instagram.
Ritika Sajdeh has quashed MI coach Boucher’s justification on sacking Rohit Sharma as captain(Getty Images)
“So many things wrong with this,” she wrote on the comments section of the SmashSports podcast.
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Uh oh! Ritika Sajdeh is not on board with Mark Boucher’s statement it seems(Screengrab)
MI’s decision to replace Rohit with Hardik was met with a lot of backlash, owing to the mighty fanbase of the India and ex-MI captain. After all, Rohit is the most successful IPL captain of all time, leading the franchise to five titles across 10 years, but his dip in form was becoming a growing concern. One of Boucher’s explanation behind the move was to allow Rohit to flourish back as a player as MI enter a transition phase. Furthermore, it was previously revealed that the primary reason why Hardik returned to MI after serving as captain of Gujarat Titans for two years – including an IPL title-winning campaign in 2022 – was because he was promised the leadership role.
“It’s just more of a cricketing decision that was made and I do think it is going to bring the best out of Rohit as a person as a player. Just let him go out and enjoy and score some good runs. He’s been captaining for ages and he’s done really well for Mumbai Indians. Now he also leads India as well. It is that he walks into a place and there’s just cameras in it and he’s so busy and he hasn’t had probably the best couple of seasons of late with the bat but he’s done well as a captain,” Boucher had said.
Also Read: Real reason behind Hardik Pandya replacing Rohit Sharma as Mumbai Indians captain revealed for the first time
Boucher’s point of view was clear…
He wanted to see Rohit the batter return to form, which he felt taking the captaincy off him would help achieve. Besides, the fact that he is already captaining India in all three formats was another factor for the MI coach as he felt being part of MI as a player would give him time away from the limelight, in turn give Rohit that breathing space to roar back to scoring runs. He struggled in IPL 2022 having scored just 268 runs and although his returns of 332 runs were slightly better, it was far from the Rohit of old.
“I just thought you know when we’re speaking with the whole Mumbai Indians group, we thought that maybe this is the opportunity for him to step as a player. We believe he got some great value to add and just go out there and actually enjoy it without the hype of being a captain,” Boucher added.
“He is still going to captain India so that hype’s going be there but when he steps into the IPL maybe just taking that extra bit of pressure off him as a captain an maybe we get the best out of Rohit Sharma. We want to see him playing with a smile on his face, spending a bit of time with his beautiful family.”
