Credit: X
Mumbai Indians coac h and former South African great Mark Boucher shared the reasoning behind replacing Rohit Sharma with all-rounder Hardik Pandya as the captain for the IPL 2024 season. Ahead of the upcoming season, Mumbai Indians pulled off a massive trade to bring in Pandya from the Gujarat Titans in an all-cash deal.
Also Read: Jasprit Bumrah to be rested for 3rd Test against England: Reports
To budget this deal, Mumbai traded away their biggest auction buy Cameron Green to the Royal Challengers Bangalore in a similar all-cash deal. Bringing back Pandya created a massive uproar in the cricketing community with many criticising MI for moving away from their most successful captain.
It’s a transition phase: Mark Boucher on making Hardik Pandya captain
Explaining this decision, Mark Boucher spoke about how the decision was strictly based on cricketing reasons. Speaking on the Smash Sports podcast, “I think it was purely a cricketing decision. We saw the window period to get Hardik back as a player. For me, it’s a transition phase. A lot of people don’t understand in India, people get quite emotional But you know you take the emotions away from it. I think it’s just more of a cricketing decision that was made and I do think it is going to bring the best out of Rohit as a person as a player. Just let him go out and enjoy and score some good runs."
He is a fantastic guy: Mark Boucher on Rohit Sharma
Further talking about Rohit Sharma, Mark Boucher praised the Indian captain for his incredible leadership skills over the past few seasons. Boucher said, “One thing I did pick up with Ro (Rohit) is that he is a fantastic guy. I mean he’s been captaining for ages and he’s done really well for Mumbai Indians. Now he also leads India as well. It is that he walks into a place and there’s just cameras in it and he’s so busy and he hasn’t had probably the best couple of seasons of late with the bat but he’s done well as a captain.”
