Former all-rounder of Indian cricket team Irfan Pathan gave his opinion on the video featuring Rohit Sharma, Akash Madhav, and Hardik Pandya, which went viral during the game of Mumbai Indians in IPL season 2024 against Punjab Kings last week before the start of the last over here and MI needed to defend 12 runs. Madhwal was surrounded by the current captain of the team, Hardik Pandya, and former captain Rohit Sharma as plans were being made to stop the Punjab Kings in a temporary change of guard, Rohit, to overtake the captaincy. As Madhwal ignored the outputs of Hardik and stuck by every word of the five-time IPL-winning captain, Rohit Sharma, in the end it all worked well as MI won the match by 9 runs.
On Monday, when the Mumbai Indians were struggling at 25 runs at the loss of three wickets while batting first against the Rajasthan Royals, Irfan Pathan took a brutal dig at Hardik Pandya while doing the commentary. Pathan feels that MI and some players of the team are still seeing Rohit Sharma as their captain, not Hardik Pandya, referring to the incident of Madhwal.
Pathan said on air, “An incident happened in the last match, before the final over Rohit Sharma, Akash Madhwal, and Hardik Pandya were standing together. Akash was only looking at Rohit Sharma and the situation was very difficult. He was only talking to Rohit as to what sort of field they need to set now. These kinds of things happen when you have confidence that this guy (Rohit) and not the other one (Hardik) are my captain. This is something that needs to change, which I feel Hardik can.
The criticism of Irfan Pathan about Hardik Pandya did not end here. After the dismissal of Hardik Pandya for 10 off 10, Pathan highlighted how the ability of Hardik Pandya to play big shots has diminished, and this is a cause for big concern because the ability of Hardik Pandya to hit big shots made him an evaluable player with the bat for team India. Hardik has been able to play some good knocks for India, such as scoring 75 runs against Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final, the twin 90s against Australia, and a century in 86 balls against Sri Lanka. But now Hardik is not the same batsman who used to put fear into the minds of the opposition bowlers.
