Mumbai Indians announced Hardik Pandya as their new captain in place of Rohit Sharma on Friday (December 15) and the news has not quite settled down well with all the fans it seems. MI have lost tremendous amount of followers of X (Formerly Twitter) and Instagram as well. A reort from India Today suggests that MI lost 400,000 followers on X after an hour of the announcement of Pandya as new captain replacing Rohit.
Mumbai Indians lost more than 5 Lakh followers since yesterday. pic.twitter.com/68Op4u4FPN
Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) December 16, 2023
Not yet 24 hours and they lost 600k followers on Instagram.
You can't escape after Messing with Rohit Sharma. pic.twitter.com/7N4Yecb3iR
Daemon (@Four_Tea_Five) December 16, 2023
Why Fans Are Not Impressed With The Decision?
Rohit Sharma took over as captain of Mumbai in 2013 from Ricky Ponting. Since then, he has led the franchise to five IPL crowns (most by any captain). His record was equalled by the great Mahendra Singh Dhoni in IPL 2023. Dhoni's Chennai Super Kings (CSK) defeated Gujarat Titans (GT) in the final. Pandya did pretty well with Titans as the skipper for two seasons - in the first one he won the IPL 2022 and reached the final in 2023. (IPL 2024: Hardik Pandya Set Condition To Return Only As Captain Of MI - Report)
However, Pandya's success as two years being captain cannot be compared to Rohit's legacy as skipper of the Mumbai Indians. So maybe that's why it is not setting down well with the MI fans. A video of a fan burning the jersey of the team after the news of Pandya as the new captain also went viral recently. Mumbai teammates Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav's social media post also suggests that not all of the people in the dressing are too happy about this news as well.
MI squad: Akash Madhwal, Arjun Tendulkar, Dewald Brevis, Ishan Kishan, Jason Behrendorff, Jasprit Bumrah, Kumar Kartikeya Singh, N. Tilak Varma, Nehal Wadhera, Piyush Chawla, Rohit Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Shams Mulani, Surya Kumar Yadav, Tim David, Vishnu Vinod, Hardik Pandya.
