The Mumbai Indians team’s captain, Hardik Pandya, took over from Rohit Sharma a few weeks ago. Not only have fans been confused by the change—which is still one of the most talked-about issues in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024—but some former cricket players have also been perplexed. The former Indian cricketer turned commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu expressed the same feelings as thousands of Rohit Sharma supporters when he questioned why the Hitman should no longer be captain of Mumbai. Hardik leads his IPL team, but Rohit still serves as captain of the Indian cricket team.

“Nobody can digest the fact that India’s hero, India’s captain, is not the captain of our franchise. ‘What wrong has he done?’ is what fans would be asking,” Sidhu said.

Additionally, there was a buzz that Hardik would be selected to captain India in the T20 World Cup of 2024, at least in the limited format. However, Jay Shah, the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), said that Rohit will continue to lead India and captain the team during the premier tournament, which gets underway in June of this year.

Sidhu believes that the Mumbai Indians would not have chosen to name Hardik as the team’s captain in place of him if the BCCI had made its announcement sooner.
“If India would have announced earlier in October that Rohit Sharma would return as the India T20I captain in 2024, then the franchise might not have taken the call. Because they would have thought that how can India captain not be the captain of the franchise,” Sidhu said. As of now, Rohit continues to captain the Indian team in all three formats, while Hardik leads the Mumbai Indians.

Of late there has been a bit of bad blood but visibly so on social media between the fans of Hitman and Pandya and not so much between the two of them at least for now.