The five times IPL champion Mumbai Indians had one of the worst seasons as it was the first team to get knocked out of the race of the play-offs in the IPL 2024 and the majority of the fans and former cricketers are holding the new skipper Hardik Pandya responsible for MI’s poor performance.
The MI management removed Rohit Sharma from the post of captaincy before the IPL 2024 and appointed Hardik Pandya as the new skipper after trading him from Gujarat Titans. Hardik Pandya started his IPL career with MI but left the Mumbai franchise as he got the captaincy offer from GT in the IPL 2022 and he certainly led his team pretty well as GT won the IPL trophy in its debut season and in the second season also, the Gujarat team played the final of the IPL 2023 which it lost to Chennai Super Kings.
After leading GT in a good manner for two seasons, he came back to his old franchise as a skipper but fans were not happy with this decision of the management and they booed Hardik Pandya in most of the matches. What made things worse was the poor performance of the team in the IPL 2024 and some former cricketers including Kevin Pietersen and AB de Villiers also slammed Hardik Pandya for the team’s bad performance.
Now the former Indian cricketer and current mentor of Kolkata Knight Riders, Gautam Gambhir has come out in support of Hardik Pandya and during a chat, he says that experts keep saying something. He says that as per him, the best parameter to judge captaincy is performances and if MI had been playing well in this season, the same experts would have been praising Hardik Pandya. Gambhir further adds that if the same set up of MI performs well next year, opinions of the same experts will change.
Gambhir defends Hardik Pandya by saying that he has come from a different franchise and he should be given some time to perform and judging his each step or decision is not the right thing to do.
When Gautam Gambhir is asked about Kevin Pietersen and AB de Villiers slamming Hardik Pandya, the former Indian cricketer says that he doesn’t think KP and ABD have any notable performances as the captain, their records should be checked. He goes on to say that he doesn’t think ABD has ever led a team in the IPL or has achieved anything other than making his big scores. According to Gambhir, Hardik Pandya is still an IPL winning captain, so oranges should be compared with oranges and not with apples.
Kevin Pietersen responded to the statement made by Gautam Gambhir soon; he took to X and accepted that Gambhir is not wrong, adding that he was terrible as a skipper. Here’s what KP wrote, “He’s not wrong. I was a terrible captain!!” with laughing emojis.
He’s not wrong. I was a terrible captain!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂@GautamGambhir 🩵
— Kevin Pietersen🦏 (@KP24) May 14, 2024
What do you think of the reaction given by Kevin Pietersen?
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