Cricket News

‘It was tough’ – Ravi Shastri on Hardik Pandya not being picked by Mumbai Indians at the Auction

Hardik Pandya was the blue-eyed boy in the Indian T20 League 2022. He had a lot of people noticing him ever since he took the captaincy. Besides, he has been superb in the league since his debut. He took the world by storm when he made a big impression straightaway in his debut season in 2015 for Mumbai.

Hardik Pandya was touted as someone who can be the next great all-rounder. He has taken to the Indian T20 League like a duck to water right from his debut season and has earned a lot of fame and accolades throughout the league.

So, when Hardik Pandya was not retained by Mumbai ahead of the 2022 edition, that gave him the shock of his life and the maverick all-rounder was gutted and felt sad because of this.

Former cricketer and coach of the Indian cricket team Ravi Shastri shed more light on this incident- “It was tough… Mumbai had Ishan Kishan, Rohit Sharna, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, and Hardik Pandya so they had to pick three out of those five. Ishan Kishan was obviously picked in the auction,” Shastri said, as quoted by Hindustan Times.

Hardik went on to become one of Mumbai’s brightest stars and stalwarts in the seven seasons. The all-rounder played 92 matches, scoring more than 1500 runs at a strike rate of nearly 150.

“It was tough… Mumbai had Ishan Kishan, Rohit Sharna, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, and Hardik Pandya so they had to pick three out of those five. Ishan Kishan was obviously picked in the auction.

He was picked by Gujarat, where he was given the extra responsibility of captaining, which did him a world of good. When given responsibility, he’s a completely different cricket as opposed to just batting and fielding,” he added. The all-rounder stormed back to mount a sensational comeback with both bat and ball and captained the Gujarat-based franchise to winning the title of the Indian T20 league in the debut season of the franchise in 2022.