Pandya's captaincy under fire after MI 2nd defeat in IPL

After Mumbai Indians suffered their second defeat in the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season, criticism once again targeted the captaincy and tactics of Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya.

The spectators witnessed a high-scoring match, with the bowlers of the Mumbai Indians’ conceding 277 runs. Despite a valiant effort by Mumbai’s batters, scoring 246/5 in response, they fell short by 31 runs.

Australian cricketer Steve Smith, part of the commentary panel for Star Sports, expressed surprise at some of the strategies employed by Hardik Pandya during the match.

“I was perplexed with some of their bowling changes in the first innings for Mumbai. Jasprit Bumrah bowled in the 4th over where he went for 5 runs. Then, we didn’t see him again till the 13th over when SRH were on a 173. All the damage had been done, you needed your best bowler to be coming back and take some wickets in that period and I think they missed a trick there bringing him back only in the 13th over,” Smith said before adding: “I think he (Hardik) got a few things wrong, and that was the main one for me. I mean you can’t have one of the best bowlers in the world bowling 1 over.”

Smith went on to elaborate how Hardik’s tactics with Bumrah in the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) vs Mumbai Indians (MI) game had been fatal for the team.

“When the ball is going around like that, you’ve just got to bring your best bowler back earlier than you would have liked. It’s just about adapting on the go and I’d have almost bowled Bumrah out by the 15th, 16th over! Try to get some wickets, if he gets wickets, you slow the rate down anyway. If the guy is batting at the end, doesn’t matter who is bowling, we saw that really with Bumrah in the last two overs and he still got smacked with the bat at the back end. So if he came back earlier and had taken some risks, things would have been really different and they got 277 and they could have been reduced to 240 and might have chased those down, so I was just perplexed that he bowled only 1 over up until the 13th over,” Smith said.

Irfan Pathan says Hardik Pandya’s captaincy was ‘ordinary’

Under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya, MI witnessed a second defeat in a row, over which the former India cricketer Irfan Pathan was also scathing in his remarks about Hardik’s captaincy.

“The captaincy of Hardik Pandya has been ordinary to say the least. Keeping Bumrah away for too long when the carnage was on was beyond my understanding,” tweeted Irfan.

He then also pointed out that Hardik had been slow off the blocks in Mumbai’s chase.

“If the whole team is playing with the strike of 200, Captain can’t bat with the batting strike rate of 120,” he posted on X.