The Mumbai Indians registered their first win of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 campaign, beating the Delhi Capitals by 33 runs at Wankhede on Sunday. While it was Hardik Pandya’s first win as the captain of the Mumbai franchise, it was his predecessor Rohit Sharma who laid the foundation for the result with a brilliant 27-ball 49. Though Rohit missed out on a half-century, he received a special award in the Mumbai Indians dressing room by coach Mark Boucher for his pivotal knock.
After receiving the award, Rohit also gave a speech, highlighting the effort the team put into the match as a unit, and put a whopping total of 234/5 on the board.
Here’s how the speech unfolded:
Mark Boucher:Ro, we are going to give the award to you as you are the senior statesman in the batting line-up.
A surprised Rohit Sharma gave a cheeky smile before being given the pin by Kieron Pollard.
Rohit Sharma: “I thought it was a wonderful batting performance. It’s something that we’ve all been striving for from game one. Goes to show that individual performances don’t matter if the whole batting group can stand up and put their hand up. If we look at the team’s goal, we can achieve that kind of a total.
“It is something that we’ve been talking about for a long time. It’s something that the batting coach (Pollard), Mark (Boucher) and the captain (Hardik) want. Wonderful to see that, like you said, long may that continue.”
Rohit hasn’t yet spoken about the captaincy change saga at the franchise, having seen his role given to Hardik Pandya at the start of the season. As a result of the change, Hardik has, time and again, found himself to be booed by fans both in away games as well as home.
However, Hardik is hopeful of a change in fortunes if he continues to lead the Mumbai Indians to back-to-back triumphs. At present, MI are placed 8th in the points table with 1 win in 4 matches.
