Kieron Pollard has come to the defense of the team’s new captain Hardik Pandya amid the recent wave of criticism.
Mumbai Indians batting coach and former team member Kieron Pollard has come to the defense of the team’s new captain Hardik Pandya amid the recent wave of criticism. Mumbai Indians team is under a major leading role transition since Hardik Pandya has replaced Rohit Sharma as the skipper of the team.
After Mumbai Indians’ campaign opener match against Gujarat Titans, Hardik Pandya was brutally trolled for his ambiguous captaincy decisions which led the five time title winners to perish in front of the previous season’s finalists.
After making numerous controversial decisions that didn’t work in Mumbai Indians’ favor, Hardik expressed optimism by looking forward to the team’s upcoming matches in IPL 2024. Pandya promoted the Australian all-rounder Tim David and dropped himself to the number seven position on the batting lineup which led Mumbai to face a six runs loss against the hosts.
The Caribbean batting all-rounder emphasized, in Mumbai Indians camp no decision is taken on full autonomy and all the judgements are made collectively by the team management. Pollard revealed that it was the management’s decision to send Pandya to bat at number seven.
Pollard said, “No decision is made on full autonomy, so we can’t say it is his decision. Usually, if you look at it over time, Tim (David) has finished games for us, and Hardik has done it over the years. It didn’t happen tonight. But all those things are in hindsight. It’s not Hardik Pandya’s decision to bat at number 7. As a team, we make decisions, so let’s put a stop to ‘Hardik Pandya made a decision, Hardik did this, Hardik did that’. We are a team. We make decisions collectively as one.”
Kieron Pollard also highlighted that Hardik Pandya has previously delivered with the new ball for Gujarat Titans in the past and a similar strategy was implied by the Mumbai Indians team management, which unfortunately shifted the momentum towards Gujarat.
“You have to plan & decide what you want to do as a team. Hardik Pandya has also bowled with the new ball for Gujarat Titans. He swung the new ball and bowled it well, which was nothing new to us,” The Mumbai Indians batting coach concluded.
