Aakash Chopra defends Hardik Pandya after Ritika Sajdeh's reaction to Mark Boucher's statement

Former India opener Aakash Chopra has said that he won’t judge Mumbai Indians’ decision to give Hardik Pandya the captaincy of the franchise for this season.

Hardik Pandya has replaced Rohit Sharma as the new captain of the Mumbai Indians for the upcoming IPL 2024 and the decision was announced after Hardik Pandya was traded from Gujarat Titans to Mumbai Indians a month before the IPL auctions. Aakash Chopra feels that Captain Pandya will have an arduous task to extract the best from his players.

Recently in an interview, Mumbai Indians’ head coach Mark Boucher mentioned that the decision to give the captaincy to Hardik Pandya was cricketing and should not be judged on emotional bias.

He also added that the decision might bring the best out of Rohit Sharma as a player. On this, Ritika Sajdeh Sharma (wife of Rohit Sharma) made a cryptic comment where she mentioned that there are so many things wrong with this. Rohit Sharma was not even properly informed about MI’s decision to change the captain.

“I was listening to an interview with Boucher where he explained why they did the captaincy change. He tried to explain the cricketing reasons, but Ritika (Rohit’s wife) commented below that, and it was obvious that it would go viral because she said – ‘So many things are wrong with this’,” said Aakash Chopra.

“We don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. I am slightly worried because the Mumbai Indians have a phenomenal team on paper, but the biggest pressure on Hardik Pandya will be whether he can combine the five fingers to make a fist, whether he can take the entire team in one direction,” the former India opener added.

Hardik Pandya Made His IPL Debut In 2015 Under Rohit Sharma’s Captaincy

Hardik Pandya made his IPL debut for Mumbai Indians in 2015 and in the same season, Rohit Sharma led the Mumbai-based franchise to their second IPL title by defeating Chennai Super Kings in the finals. Rohit Sharma has led Mumbai Indians to five IPL trophies and has been one of the most successful captains in the league’s history.

He has defeated even MS Dhoni in terms of captaincy records in the IPL. However, he won’t be leading the side any further as Hardik Pandya has been announced as the new skipper.

The decision to give captaincy to Hardik Pandya received a lot of rage from the fans as they were agitated by the decision to strip the most successful IPL captain of his role.

Hardik Pandya is currently recovering from his ankle injury which he got during the ODI World Cup match against Bangladesh and since then, he has not played competitive cricket and is recovering well to feature in the IPL 2024.

Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai Indians lost to Hardik Pandya-led Gujarat Titans in the Second Qualifier match of the IPL 2023. Rohit Sharma has taken Mumbai Indians to the Playoffs seven out of 11 seasons under his leadership and out of seven, he has won the IPL title five times which shows how crucial he has been for MI’s legacy.