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First home game after his return to his old franchise, Hardik Pandya got booed by the crowd. Sanjay Manjrekar who was the toss presenter had to ask the crowd to “behave”
The incident occurred during the time of toss when Manjrekar was introducing the captains,
“Two captains with me- Hardik Pandya, captain of the Mumbai Indians, a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen,” this was followed by a load uproar of booing from the Wankhade crowd. This led Manjrekar to interfere and ask the crowd to “behave”.
Sanjay Manjrekar asking Wankhede crowd to behave. pic.twitter.com/rxLRSO33yN
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) April 1, 2024
This was the first time in the history of the Indian Premier League that a home captain got booed by his own crowd. Fortune also didn’t go in Pandya’s favour either, with Rajasthan winning the toss and electing to bowl first. To make things worse former captain Rohit Sharma, Naman Dhir and Impact player Dewald Brevis went back to the pavilion on their first ball respectively. Even though Pandya and Tilak Varma showed fighting intent, Mumbai was restricted to 125 after twenty overs.
This was not the first match where Pandya got booed by the crowd. In the first two matches against Gujrat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad, the crowd let their feelings know to Pandya. Notably, in Ahmedabad where he had a successful stint as Captain and won their maiden IPL title, the crowd didn’t show him any love on his return.
Hardik Pandya was one of the fan favourites in the country until his captaincy saga in his second spell at Mumbai Indians. Current Indian Captain Rohit Sharma who led Mumbai to 5 titles was relieved from his captaincy duty to focus more on his playing side. Rohit’s dip in form over the last couple of seasons prompted the franchise to take the decision. Hardik, who started his IPL journey as a rookie in 2015 was part of the Mumbai Indians franchise till 2021. In the 2022 mega auction with the arrival of two new teams, Gujarat and Lucknow, Pandya joined the Gujarat-based franchise as their captain and led them in back to back finals and a trophy in their maiden year in the tournament. So, keep that in mind Mumbai decided to bring back Hardik and hand over the reigns. The decision didn’t go well with the fan base and even before the start of the tournament repercussions were seen with a significant dip of followers across social media for the Mumbai Indians franchise.
Mumbai Indians are the only team yet to win a match this campaign. With fans already being infuriated with the change of captaincy, if the result doesn’t start to show soon, things might become much worse for Hardik and Co.
