NEW DELHI: Former South African captain
AB de Villiers
has expressed concerns about
Hardik Pandya
's captaincy approach at Mumbai Indians, suggesting that Pandya's ego-driven style was more effective with the relatively inexperienced squad of Gujarat Titans.
De Villiers implied that senior players at Mumbai Indians have faced challenges in adapting to this leadership style.
"MI have been very disappointing.
I backed them to qualify for the knockout stages, but that didn't happen. What has gone wrong? 5th in 2021, 10th in 2022, 4th in 2023 and they are 9th. Rohit Sharma said, 'I have played under a lot of captains. It's nothing new. You do what you are required to do and I have been doing that for the last one month.' You can read a little bit into that if you want to," he said on his YouTube channel.
"The captaincy style of Hardik Pandya is quite bravado. It's ego-driven in a way, chest out. I don't think how he walks on the field is always genuine, but he has decided that is his way of captaincy. Almost like MS. Cool, calm, collective, always got your chest out. But when you play with a lot of experienced players, guys who have been around for ages... They don't buy into that. It worked at GT, where it was a younger team. Sometimes, inexperienced players love to follow that kind of leadership," de Villiers added.
Reports indicate that certain senior members of the team have raised concerns about Hardik Pandya's captaincy style, noting that it has led to a decline in the team's morale during the IPL season.
Senior players in the likes of Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav held a meeting following a loss in which the players expressed what they believe is the underlying problem and individual meetings were also held to determine the problem, an Indian Express report stated.
A Mumbai Indian official attributed the team's struggles this season to the transitional phase that they are in. "These are regular teething problems for a team that sees leadership change. This happens in sports all the time," the official was quoted as saying in the report.
English (US) ·