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Now that the Mumbai Indians IPL season is almost over, their agony is far from over. The decision to remove Rohit Sharma has hurt them so much that the team never turned up in the best form in the entire IPL. If the team knew that Rohit would lead India in the T20 World Cup, the Mumbai promoters wouldn’t have opted for Hardik Pandya. Who knows? But the question asked in the Indian cricket circuit is what was Sachin Tendulkar doing then as a most important member of the Mumbai Indians support staff. Shouldn’t the Mumbai maestro have informed the franchisee about the impending decision of BCCI to go ahead with Rohit as T20 captain?
And when the entire world knows how close the selectors like Ajit Agarkar, Salil Ankola, Subrata Bannerjee, and Shiv Sundar Das are to Tendulkar, how come the Mumbai Indians had no clue about it before naming Hardik their captain?
Does it mean the selectors were clueless about Rohit continuing as the T20 captain? Hardik was named the captain of the Mumbai Indians on December 15, 2023, while the selectors announced Rohit as the T20 captain for the Afghanistan series on January 7, 2024. Finally, BCCI Secretary Jay Shah announced Rohit as India’s T20 captain for the World Cup in mid-February. Nearly a two-month window and T20 captaincy was a talking point in corridors of power in Indian cricket, and Tendulkar was just a silent spectator. Was he?
Did he actually speaks to the Mumbai Indians promoters about BCCI’s plan to continue with Rohit as its T20 captain? Is he powerful enough to take the cause of the players? “Mumbai had no clue about it,” a source suggested.
It’s not about the Mumbai Indians doing badly in IPL 2024; it is about the Indian team getting affected because of the decision of the Mumbai Indians to remove Rohit Sharma as their captain. Since Virat Kohli left the Indian captaincy in all formats, all the mainstay Indian captains have been from the Mumbai Indians, including Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, and Hardik Pandya. Therefore, Mumbai Indians did not know that Rohit would be captaining India in the T20 World Cup is also bizarre logic.
The way Rohit lost his Mumbai Indians captaincy, what was Tendulkar doing then? Didn’t he disapprove of how the change of guard happened? The only time Tendulkar opened up was when former Indian coach Greg Chappell questioned his credentials as a top-order batter. Otherwise, he has always maintained a diplomatic silence whenever controversy erupted in Indian cricket. This lack of communication cost the Mumbai Indians so dear that it hopefully won’t percolate at the international level when Rohit and Pandya would be representing on the world stage!
