Rohit Sharma may be the most successful skipper of the IPL as Mumbai Indians has won the IPL title 5 times under his captaincy but in the IPL 2023, neither he nor his team performed as per the expectations attached with them.
MI struggled in the first phase of the tournament but it improved in the second phase by playing some good cricket and by winning matches. Luck also favored MI as Gujarat Titans defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore in the last league match which helped MI in getting entry in the playoffs.
However, MI got knocked out of the tournament after getting defeated by Gujarat Titans in the Qualifier 2 and the skipper Rohit Sharma got slammed for his and MI’s lackluster performance.
The former Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden was so upset with the MI skipper that he stated that he hasn’t seen Rohit Sharma making big scores for India and MI in important matches. Hayden went on to say that Rohit Sharma didn’t score runs whenever his team needed it the most.
It’s quite obvious that fingers will be raised on non-performance as fans, former cricketers, etc. may support a person in lean phase for some time but if that phase stretches for a long time, then people start losing patience and nobody expects this type of performance from 5 times IPL winning skipper and his team.
As far as the match between MI and GT is concerned, the toss was won by Rohit Sharma and he decided to put GT to bat first. Batting first, GT put up a huge total of 233/3 on the scoreboard with the help of a superb knock of Shubman Gill who scored his third century in the IPL (129 runs, 60 balls, 7 fours & 10 sixes). While Wriddhiman Saha could manage only 18 runs (16 balls, 3 fours), Sai Sudarshan made a useful contribution of 43 runs (31 balls, 5 fours & 1 six). Skipper Hardik Pandya remained not out at the score of 28 (13 balls, 2 fours & 2 sixes) and the target of 234 proved to be too much for Rohit Sharma-led squad as the whole team got wrapped up for 171 in 18.2 overs.
Hitman failed in leading from the front as he got out on the score of 8 runs after facing 7 deliveries and only three MI batters – Cameron Green (30 runs, 20 balls, 2 fours & 2 sixes), Suryakumar Yadav (61 runs, 38 balls, 7 fours & 2 sixes) and Tilak Varma (43 runs, 14 balls, 5 fours & 3 sixes) showed some resistance to the GT bowlers.
Well Rohit Sharma has played many match-winning knocks for India and MI in the past but do you feel that it is time for MI to find a new skipper? Let us know your views in this regard.
