Hardik Pandya had a difficult start to his captaincy stint with the Mumbai Indians after his team suffered a 6 run loss against his former team Gujarat Titans. Now ahead of their second game against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Former Indian cricket team fast bowler Lakshmipathy Balaji believes that it will take time for Hardik Pandya to make his own place as Mumbai Indians skipper. “It's been going on for a while, definitely it's not normally something which you see, a lot of friendships happen, players have gone to different franchises, yes this is one of the cases, but being in a professional field you have to accept that one side is emotional and one side is something very big, when you come to replace a personality like Rohit Sharma who is already a phenomenal achiever when it comes to Mumbai Indians. Definitely it will take some time, it will settle."
"And you have to win your own men, so for Hardik to win the whole dressing room is very important as a player and as a human so definitely that trust needs to be earned and it will take some time to adapt and accept and I'm sure he's good enough and professional enough and he'll accept that and he's got a young team around him and when they start winning the emotions will be different. If they start losing, then you have problems to face. So slowly things will pop up. It's better to have a friend in a winning front rather than a losing front," he said on Star Sports. Riding on a 77-run stand for the third wicket between former captain Rohit Sharma and Dewald Brevis, Mumbai bounced back from a nervy start to the chase of 169. Gujarat, however, managed to choke the run-scoring for Mumbai while dismissing both the well-set batters as the visitors scored just 23 runs in the next 24 balls. Heading into the slog overs, MI still had the game in their hand with 39 more to win from six wickets in hand. However, GT bowlers prevailed in the death overs with brilliant performance from Rashid Khan, Mohit Sharma, debutant Spencer Johnson and Umesh Yadav as Mumbai were restricted to just 162 for nine in the chase.
