Hardik Pandya made his debut as the captain of Mumbai Indians yesterday. It was again against Gujarat Titans, the team he had led for the last two seasons. Sunil Gavaskar-Kevin Pietersen questioned Pandya’s first decision on the field as captain.
Pandya’s team did not win the match in the end. Chasing Gujarat’s 168 runs, Mumbai Indians stopped at 162 runs for 9 wickets in 20 overs. With this, the team lost the first match in 12 consecutive seasons in IPL.
Pandya won the toss and took the field at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. He then picked up the ball in the first over himself, although the regular bowler of the new ball in the IPL and the Indian national team, Yashpreet Bumrah, was in the XI. Pandya started the match by taking a boundary off Wriddhiman Saha. Later Shubman Gill also hit four and he gave 11 runs in the first over. He gave another 9 runs in the next over. As a result, Gujarat got 20 runs from the first 2 overs bowled by Pandya.
Former England captain Pietersen, who was on commentary at the time, said, ‘Why was the bowling not opened with Bumrah? I don’t understand anything. Sunil Gavaskar was with Pietersen. The Indian legend supported him and said, ‘Very good question. Very, very good question. Another former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan also made a post on X about this. He wrote, ‘Where is Bumrah?’
That Bumrah was needed at the start proved to be the case in no time. Coming into the attack in the fourth over, he bowled Wriddhiman with a 140.6 km per hour yorker delivery. Bumrah later dismissed Sai Sudarshan and David Miller. In all, he bowled 4 overs and took 3 wickets for just 14 runs. And Pandya is wicketless with 30 runs in 3 overs.
The match ended in disappointment for Pandya in batting as well. Mumbai needed 19 runs in the last over, Pandya eased the equation by picking up 10 runs off the first 2 balls of Umesh Yadav. But Mumbai could not match that equation after he was caught off the third ball. And after entering the field at the beginning of the match, Narendra Modi heard both from the gallery of the stadium. Pandya, who led Gujarat in this field last year too, moved to Mumbai at the end of the year.