Aaron Finch says he would have loved to see Rohit Sharma address Hardik Pandya’s booing publicly.
The situation involving Mumbai Indians, captain Hardik Pandya and his predecessor Rohit Sharma may be past its worst phase, but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Why exactly was it that Rohit was let go of MI captaincy? Why was there no acknowledgement of it? Was it the reason behind MI’s failed IPL 2024 campaign? Or did the players simply not warm up to Hardik as their new captain? The answers to these questions may or may not get answered, but Aaron Finch can’t help but wrap his head around one thing – Why didn’t Rohit address the Pandya situation openly?
Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya have had a pretty weird time at Mumbai Indians this IPL(PTI)
It won’t require rocket science to determine whether the decision to remove Rohit as captain and appoint Hardik as his replacement did not sit well with the public. Hardik was jeered and booed during both home and away matches, to the extent that Sanjay Manjrekar’s intervention was required when he asked the Wankhede crowd to ‘behave’. In between, a couple of instances captured Rohit urging the public to stop the booing, but it had little effect as the dissent continued… all the way till MI were eliminated. Amid the turmoil, Finch wonders if Rohit addressing the situation in front of the public would have taken some hate off Hardik, and who knows, perhaps resulted into a better IPL campaign.
Unlock exclusive access to the latest news on India’s general elections, only on the HT App. Download Now! Download Now!
“Just the one thing that I would have loved to have seen from Rohit throughout the IPL campaign is to make some kind of public statement because the resentment towards Hardik from the public has been unbelievable – getting booed. And it’s changed to cheers when he walks out since the World Cup squad has been announced,” Finch said on Around the Wicket.
“But for eight games, Hardik was getting booed during a Mumbai Indians game. So I would have loved seeing Rohit come out and say something publicly. Say ‘No, this is part of the plan for Mumbai Indians, and Hardik’s got my full support. Just think that would have put things to be a lot more quickly.”
How the MI wheels came off
Hardik’s return to MI and his appointment as captain – having led Gujarat Titans to an IPL title and a runner-up finish in the previous two years – was expected to be a turning point in the franchise’s history. Still, IPL 2024 proved to be anything but that. MI, the five-time champions, who transformed themselves into an IPL powerhouse by winning a championship every alternate year from 2013 to 2019 and then pulling off a double in 2020, haven’t won a trophy since, and the wait is going to prolong for at least another year.
And that’s not it. With a mega-auction lined up ahead of IPL 2025, it’s unknown if Rohit will return for MI next year. Although Rohit has looked pretty calm and neat about his new role of just as a batter for MI, how long MI will persist with the decision remains to be seen. Just yesterday, reports emerged that Hardik is facing resistance in the dressing room, and some teammates are not used to seeing him as their captain. Besides, the fact that Hardik threw Tilak Varma under the bridge despite the youngster scoring a fighting fifty has rubbed off on players the wrong way.
