Hardik Pandya made his return to competitive cricket© X (formerly Twitter)
Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya has made his much awaited return to the field of cricket as he leads the Reliance 1 side in the DY Patil T20 tournament. Pandya has not played international cricket for India since suffering an ankle injury during India’s ICC Cricket World Cup group stage match against Bangladesh in October last year. He missed out on the series of five T20Is against Australia at home, the tour to South Africa as well, which consisted of three ODIs and T20Is each. Suryakumar Yadav, the number-one ranked T20I batter, stepped up as captain in Pandya’s absence.
Ahead of the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) season, last November Pandya was traded to Mumbai Indians (MI) from the Gujarat Titans (GT), replacing their five-time Indian Premier League (IPL) trophy-winning MI skipper Rohit Sharma in the 2024 season of the cash-rich league.
Pandya is leading a star studded line-up that features the likes of Tilak Verma, Nehal Wadhera, Akash Madhwal and Piyush Chawla. These players could feature with MI under the leadership of Pandya.
But in the upcoming T20 World Cup, which is slated to be played in June in the West Indies and USA, Rohit Sharma will be leading the side with hopes of ending India’s ICC trophy drought.
Earlier, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah confirmed that skipper Rohit Sharma will be captaining Men in Blue in the ICC T20 World Cup and expressed optimism that Team India will win the coveted T20 cricket prize and end their ICC trophy drought of over a decade.
“We may have lost the final of World Cup 2023. But we won the hearts of everyone by winning 10 matches in a row. I am confident that India will lift the 2024 T20 World Cup under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy at Barbados,” said the BCCI secretary.
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