Former Australia cricketer Tom Moody says that Hardik Pandya’s biggest challenge as the Indian Premier League (IPL) side Mumbai Indians’ (MI) skipper will be not allowing the pressure to enter the dressing room. Notably, Pandya will be making a return to MI after two seasons as Gujarat Titans’ skipper in 2022 and 2023 seasons. The blockbuster trade also saw Pandya replacing Rohit Sharma as the Mumbai skipper.

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“They (MI) expect nothing but excellence, which is what you will expect of any high-performance environment. So Hardik’s challenge is managing that expectation and allowing himself and his whole team to be able to play with that freedom, without that pressure sort of filtering into the dressing room,” Moody said to StarSport.

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On speaking if losing the captaincy will have any effect on Rohit, Moody said: “We know what Rohit Sharma is capable of doing and how dangerous he is as a player, as he has demonstrated with an Indian shirt on his back. I don’t think the captaincy is going to have any bearing on his approach. I think he will go out and play his brand of cricket. He is very confident and owns his own game.”

Mumbai won five titles under Rohit’s captaincy after he took over the reins in 2013. He marshalled the troops in 158 games, second only to CSK skipper MS Dhoni’s 226. During his tenure, Rohit won 87 games – also the second most behind Dhoni’s 133 wins.

As a batter, Rohit is fourth highest run-getter in the league history. The Indian skipper has 6,211 runs in 243 games, behind only Virat Kohli (7,263 runs), Shikhar Dhawan (6,617 runs) and David Warner (6,397 runs). Sharma, however, has most most sixes among active IPL players – 257 – which is also the second highest overall to Chris Gayle’s 357.

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