Hyderabad: The mega auction of Indian Premier League 2025 was held on 24 and 25 November in Saudi Arabia. After which all the teams have started their preparations. Mumbai Indians, one of the most successful teams in the IPL, has picked a strong squad this season through the mega auction. However, Hardik Pandya, who was retained by the franchise for Rs 16 crores and was supposed to lead Mumbai Indians (MI), will not be able to play MI’s first match in IPL 2025. The skipper of the team is banned for the first match.
One match ban on Hardik Pandya
The BCCI had banned captain Hardik Pandya for one match due to the slow over-rate in the last match of Mumbai Indians in IPL 2024. If a team is found to bowl with a slow over rate 3 times in a season, the captain of the team is banned for 1 match. Thus, Hardik will miss MI’s first match in the tournament.
𝐀𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐩 ft. 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐤 𝐏𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐲𝐚 💙 🤌#MumbaiMeriJaan #MumbaiIndians #TATAIPLAuction | @hardikpandya7 pic.twitter.com/vpyxOE4SVz
— Mumbai Indians (@mipaltan) December 2, 2024
In MI’s last league game of IPL 2024, they locked horns against Lucknow Supergiants. The opposition posted a total of 214 runs while Mumbai managed to muster only 196 runs on the scoreboard. Rohit Sharma played a knock of 68 runs in the match while Hardik wasn’t able to play a significant knock.
Suryakumar Yadav might handle captaincy
In the absence of Hardik, MI will have two options to handle the role of leadership for the first game. Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav are the other two options who can lead the team in such a scenario. Suryakumar is captaining the Indian T20 team currently so he is likely to take over the role of leadership.
