Aakash Chopra Names 3 Players Mumbai Indians Should Retain Ahead Of Mega-Auction

Former India batsman Aakash Chopra has named his choices for the three players the Mumbai Indians (MI) should retain ahead of the mega auction for IPL 2021.

There hasn’t been any official confirmation by the BCCI about the number of retention and Right To Match Card that will be made available for a franchise for the mega-auction. It is, though, believed that because of the addition of two new teams, the retentions won’t be more than three per team.

Aakash Chopra, therefore, has picked skipper Rohit Sharma, speedster Jasprit Bumrah and all-rounder Hardik Pandya as the three players who he feels MI should retain. These are also the same three players who MI had retained ahead of the mega-auction in 2018 and all three of them played a huge part in their title victories in 2019 and 2020.

In his YouTube video, Aakash Chopra said, “I don’t think teams will be allowed to retain more than three players. In my opinion, Mumbai Indians should retain Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. That would be my choice.”

The typical big season has never come for Rohit Sharma in the IPL: Aakash Chopra

Aakash Chopra highlighted that Rohit Sharma has not had a big run-scoring IPL season. Only once has the opener scored over 500 runs in a season – when he amassed 538 runs in 2013, the same year when he took over the captaincy and led Mumbai to their maiden title.

“Rohit Sharma made runs but the typical big season has never come for him in the IPL. I cannot recall him scoring 500-600 runs in one IPL season. As good a cricketer as he is, Rohit hasn’t scored a lot of runs in franchise cricket in one season. He batted well but the big runs were still missing,” the commentator pointed out.

This year, Sharma had another middling IPL season, scoring 381 runs with just a solitary half-century. His side failed to qualify for the playoffs due to an inferior net run rate than KKR.

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