After ending a disastrous season at the bottom of the points table, Mumbai Indians (MI) coach Mark Boucher acknowledged the team’s struggles but emphasized the need for patience and careful consideration before making changes. Mumbai’s Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season came to an abrupt end after an 18-run loss to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), leaving them at the bottom of the IPL standings. Boucher addressed Hardik Pandya’s captaincy and batting woes and acknowledged the all-rounder’s leadership potential.
The MI head coach believes that Pandya will learn from this experience and become a stronger leader.
Hardik had his worst season with both bat and ball and his captaincy eventually came under criticism as well.
“Even Hardik would have been disappointed with his performance. From the captain’s point of view, he played a great game,” Boucher said in his post-match press conference.
Boucher believes Pandya will grow as a leader and gain knowledge from this experience.
“There are a lot of things around him that sometimes cloud his thinking. It’s difficult for him as a leader as well. He’s definitely had a lot of support in our dressing room and people are trying to help him. It’s a tough time, but it’s going to be tougher in the future. He will be a leader, so some fantastic things will happen for Hardik Pandya as a leader,” he added.
“He came into the season with little cricket behind him, so it was always quite a tough situation for him. We understood that. As the season went on, his bowling got a lot better. Unfortunately, he didn’t bat. This season he’s had a lot of confidence.” It gave us a glimpse of what can be done,” the MI coach said.
On Pandya’s captaincy and his own future, Boucher remained tight-lipped but stressed that important decisions should always be taken after a dispassionate assessment.
“As for my work, to be honest, I’m not sure where it’s going to go. As I said, it’s early days. A lot of people are emotional. There’s probably going to be discussions about everything. I don’t think we’re just one person. We “If you are in an area where you are performing well, you should look at if you are underperforming,” he added.
“So the only thing I can do as a coach is to do the best I can at what I did. I have no regrets about what I did here. Could I have done better? We’ll sit down. We’ll sit down and do it, just like every player. “Evaluate it,” he said.
Concerns have been raised about MI’s sub-par performances over the past three years and Boucher agreed that a comprehensive analysis of the five-time IPL champions’ form is needed.
“Yes, it’s disappointing. After the auction we identified the bowlers as players we wanted to strengthen and we felt we did that. It wasn’t good for us to lose two players so early in the season, but we still have some great options. On paper, we have I thought we would have done a lot better than we have done so far, but we were not able to combine our batting and bowling in one match,” Boucher said.
“This is a cause for concern and something we definitely need to address as a franchise. I’m sure we will. Mumbai Indians is a very successful franchise for a reason. When we see trends like that, we take a look and if there are trends that come up every year, we sit down and take a few steps. I know I have to make changes and make big decisions.” said the MI coach.
In just 14 IPL 2024 matches, Hardik scored 216 runs, including a maximum of 46. The all-rounder’s season started to fall apart pretty early, with an average of 18 and a strikeout rate of 143.05.
Despite taking 11 wickets with the ball throughout the season, his economy rate was 10.75 and his average was 35.18.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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