Rohit Sharma and Mumbai Indians had a horrible outing in IPL 2024. Under the captaincy of new captain, Hardik Pandya, the 5-time champions became the first team to be eliminated from the race for the top 4. And with the IPL 2025 Mega Auction coming up, it only makes sense why Rohit Sharma should leave Mumbai Indians. Let us find out some of the reasons for the same.
Mumbai Indians shocked the world ahead of IPL 2024 when they announced that Hardik Pandya would be the new skipper of the team. Hardik Pandya was traded back to MI from Gujarat Titans. He returned to his old side to take Rohit’s captaincy.
Rift with Mumbai Indians
One of the major problems that Rohit Sharma had this season was with the Mumbai Indians team management. Previously reports emerged that the MI management and Rohit are at crossroads. This mainly resulted with Rohit being stripped off his captaincy.
Now the question rises – Is Rohit Sharma a poor captain? Absolutely. He has led MI to win a record of 5-IPL trophies. But the management decided to try out Hardik Pandya as the next best option to lead the charge for the Blue Army. But things took a strange turn.
The team got divided with a majority of the senior players siding with Rohit as their captain. Despite Hardik’s best tries, the team couldn’t gel well and the result is what we see now. As a result, Rohit moving out of the franchise can be the best thing for both the parties.
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Age and Poor Form
Rohit Sharma is 37 years old. While he continues to effectively lead the Indian team, he is not getting younger with every day. Another burden for him, is his poor form over the past couple of years. Especially in IPL, Rohit last played well some 4 seasons ago.
He has been extremely inconsistent in his performances, while sporadically scoring runs as per his whims. With age and poor form citing as a crucial factor, it would be extremely beneficial for the player switch sides and join a team that will look to side and uplift him, rather than being entirely dependant on him.
Rohit vs Hardik clash
One of the worst things to happen in IPL 2024 was the constant clash between Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya. In a bizarre state of affairs, Hardik has been captaining Rohit in IPL while it will be vice-versa next month when India play in the ICC T20 World Cup.
The tension between both the players is paramount and has been reflected in the field quite often. Instances of Hardik telling Rohit to field in the boundaries, to players listening to Rohit and Hardik has been a common occurrence in IPL this season. Thus in a bid to stay away from this toxicity, it is best for Rohit to switch sides in the upcoming IPL 2025 Mega Auction.