Ever since Hardik Pandya has been named the MI skipper, the whole franchise and their star player have been at the receiving end of a lot of backlash. From booing Hardik Pandya, running hate campaigns against him to trolling his family; Rohit Sharma and other cricket fans have shown no mercy towards Pandya.
Sidhu weighs in on the controversy
Several former cricketers, commentators and experts have weighed in on the whole matter. Now, Navjot Singh Sidhu has also shared his opinion on the whole thing. "Pandya is blameless. The fans are upset because they cannot accept or comprehend that an Indian captain is not leading his franchise in the premier cricket league," he said in an interview.
Sidhu further blamed the timing of the announcement as the main reason behind the backlash. "If the BCCI had named Rohit as captain for the T20 World Cup in October, the franchise wouldn't have chosen Hardik as captain. It's a matter of the franchise's respect. So, the actual issue here is timing," he stated.
Irfan Pathan lashes out
Former cricketer Irfan Pathan also slammed Hardik Pandya's captaincy and accused him of not taking difficult decisions. After MI's loss against RR, Pathan questioned Pandya's use of star bowler Jasprit Bumrah and not taking correct captaincy decisions. "You always want your Leader to do the difficult things. If he doesn't do it he won't earn his team's respect," Pathan tweeted.
"Not a rocket science to get your best bowler early on. Finally Bumrah with the new ball. It was forced cos of small total by RR," he further tweeted. Amid all this, there have been reports of MI planning on bringing back Rohit as the captain and some reports also say that this might be Rohit's last IPL playing from Mumbai.
