Former captain of South Africa cricket team Graeme Smith slammed the five-time format Champions Mumbai Indians after their deserting defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders on Friday at the Wankhede Stadium. This defeat also marked the end of the 12-year exile of KKR for victory against Mumbai Indians on their home ground, where they had trailed 1-9 in the head-to-head.
Smith slammed the Hardik Pandya LED Mumbai Indians. He called them a confused unit. He indicated the disturbance happened in the initial phase of the campaign of the Mumbai Indians, where Hardik Pandya took over the duties of captain over Rohit Sharma as one of the reasons behind their poor performances. Smith also said that having Tilak Varma add number 3, followed by Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya at numbers 4 and 5, respectively,.
After the match, Graeme Smith said, “Hardik Pandya has really struggled; he looks like a man under pressure, and that obviously is creating a little bit of disturbance in the environment, and who knows whether it has affected the people or not, but even their batting line-up looks like they were confused. I think Tilak Varma and Wadhera are floating in the middle order, whereas Naman dhir is batting at 3 tonight. They are moving all over the place. They should have had Tilak batting at number 3 after him, Surya Kumar Yadav at number 4, and captain Hardik Pandya at number 5 through the season, David at number 6, and then figure out their bowling unit.”
Smith further said, “They just have been a very confused team this year, and it is very disappointing from one of the mega franchises in the ongoing season of the IPL. A number of people will be very sad tonight, mainly in the MI fan base and MI camp.”
The Legend of South Africa cricket team was also wondering if the leadership group of MI head figured out their square for the next year. He also believes that the five-time champions had to swallow a bitter pill by releasing some of their players for the next year of the tournament.
Currently, the Mumbai Indians are placed at number 9 in the IPL 20-24 points table, with only three victories from 11 games. The chances for players to miss are very minimal.
