Hardik Pandya has been going through a lean patch lately. He has not been performing as per his standards, and his team, the Mumbai Indians, is also not doing well. Adding on to that misery, he was fined Rs. 30 lakh after his team maintained a slow over rate during their Indian Premier League match against the Lucknow Super Giants at the Wankhede Stadium.
The IPL statement read,
“As it was his team’s third offense of the season under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum overrate offenses, Pandya was fined Rs. 30 lakh and banned from playing the team’s next match.”
Apart from Hardik Pandya, the other players in the XI, including the impact player, were fined either 12 lakhs or 50 percent of their match fees, whichever is less. The Mumbai Indians played their last match of the season, where LSG set a target of 214 and Nicholas Pooran struck a sensational 28-ball 75.
Despite two half centuries from Rohit Sharma and Naman Dhir, the Mumbai Indians felt 18 runs short of the target. After this loss, MI finished the season at the bottom with eight points in 14 matches, and the Lucknow SuperGiants finished with 14 points. LSG had their fate in their hands; had they won the game against DC, by now they would be in contention to qualify for the playoffs.
Before the start of the season, Hardik Pandya was named the captain of Mumbai Indians, replacing Rohit Sharma. It created a mess, and since then, they have been going downhill. They have not delivered collectively and have always felt short in the crunch moments. In an interaction with the broadcast, the skipper said,
“Quite difficult; this season we didn’t play good quality cricket, and it cost us the whole season. It’s a professional world; sometimes there’ll be good and sometimes bad days. As a group, we didn’t play quality and smart cricket, and it showed in the results. Too early to exactly point out what went wrong tonight.”