File photo of Hardik Pandya in Mumbai Indians colours© BCCI/IPL
The one news that has taken the Indian cricket scene by storm is the likely move of Hardik Pandya from Gujarat Titan to Mumbai Indians. While Hardik Pandya attained stardom at Mumbai Indians, he moved away from the franchise and joined Gujarat Titans as captain. He even led Gujarat Titans to an IPL title win. “Hardik Pandya is likely to return to Mumbai Indians. He will leave Gujarat Titans,” sources told NDTV. The move will have a big ripple effect as Hardik Pandya was the skipper of the Gujarat Titans team.
Ravichandran Ashwin has now commented on the likely move.
“If it’s true Mumbai Indians have struck gold. So if it’s true and it’s a complete cash deal from whatever I read. There’s no player that Mumbai is giving, Mumbai Indians have never given players on trade. I don’t think it has happened ever. But how does that XI look like if Hardik goes back who’s an MI grown player,” Ashwin said in a video on his Instagram page.
He then gwent on to write the playing XI that has: Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma, Nehal Wadhera, Tim David, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal and Jofra Archer/Ryle Meredith/Jason Behrendorff/Mitchell Starc/Pat Cummins.
“There’s three times when a captain has been traded. One, yours truly, no. 2 Ajinkya Rahane and now Hardik Pandya.
“The only difference between us and Hardik is that he’s an IPL-winning captain which completely changes the balance for even Gujarat Titans. It will be interesting to see whether another Pandya might.. oh sorry sorry. But what Mumbai needs to do now is because Hardik Pandya is a 15-crore player. They have to free up their purse to make sure they come under the auction budget.”
Pandya had played seven seasons of IPL for Mumbai before being released prior to the 2022 season. After joining Gujarat Titans, Pandya led the side to back-to-back IPL finals, including earning them the trophy in their debut season.
There is no confirmation yet from MI whether they have decided to release their Rs 8 crore mega buy Jofra Archer, who has been injured for the better part of the last two seasons.
With the IPL Governing Council increasing the purse by an additional Rs 5 crore, MI go into the mini-auction with Rs 5.50 crore (up from the existing Rs 50 lakh purse) unless they release some of their big buys to swell the reserve money.
With PTI inputs
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