Stakeholder #1 is Hardik ‘Controversy’ Pandya. Yes, that should be his name. The rock star captain of the Mumbai Indians is talented, flashy and unapologetic. In Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, Pandya is courting controversy again. The big charge against him is ‘grabbing’ the captaincy of the Mumbai Indians from Rohit Sharma, the man who led MI to five IPL crowns.
But, is Pandya to blame? The question is simple, the answer is complex.
Stakeholder #2 is the Indian cricket fan. An emotional fanatic. Someone who loves you one day and hates you the next. The fans’ treatment of Pandya ever since he took to the field as captain of the Mumbai Indians typifies that. But is the fan solely to blame for the behaviour in response to the MI captaincy mess? Yes, the fans need to introspect about the ‘casteist’ nature of their trolling and jeering of Pandya, but beyond that, their emotions are understandable too.
The buck really stops at those making the big bucks
Stakeholder #3 is the Mumbai Indians management; those who own and run the franchise, which along with the Chennai Super Kings, is the most successful in the IPL history. Strangely, most media is silent about their role in all of this, allowing the whole controversy to become a Pandya Vs Fans thing. While it really should not be.
It won’t be wrong to say that it’s the MI bosses who should be carrying the can, who should be facing the music, who should be dealing with most of the fan-anger, and not Pandya.
Let’s ask some basic questions –
Who chose to replace Rohit Sharma? The MI bosses.
Who chose to bring in Hardik Pandya? The MI bosses.
Who seems to have not taken Rohit Sharma fully on board before the announcement was made in December 2023? The MI bosses.
Who failed to settle all the ruffled feathers in the months that followed the announcement, before IPL 2024 started? The MI bosses.
Who made the huge mistake of assuming that the MI fans would love the decision to replace Rohit with Hardik? The MI bosses.
Who decided not to bother about communicating the reasons behind the decision to the highly loyal, highly emotional, and highly knowledgeable MI fans? The MI bosses.
After Pandya was jeered in Wankhede, the home of the Mumbai Indians, who still chose to remain silent, leaving the captain to deal with it by himself? The MI bosses.
Hey Mumbai Indian bosses, why so silent?
So, India’s cricket loving fans, and Mumbai Indians’ loyal fans, really need to direct their displeasure at the MI bosses. It seems naïve on their part to only go after Pandya. The MI owners and management, from Neeta Ambani and her son Akash, to the galaxy of former cricket greats – Sachin Tendulkar, Mahela Jayawardene, Lasith Malinga, Mark Boucher, Keiron Pollard – who make up the Mumbai management team – seem unmoved by the controversy, exuding an attitude and body language that all is well, and that they owe the fans no answers. This is what the fans must call out.
As Harsha Bhogle has rightly pointed out on social media, Pandya was not wrong in taking the job. It was quite like a corporate situation where a former employee (Hardik), left the company (Mumbai Indians) for a better job opportunity (captaining Gujarat Titans), where he added laurels to his CV (IPL win in 2022 and runners-up in 2023), and then returned to the earlier company in a more senior role (captain).
The cricket fan is not a docile Reliance Industries Limited shareholder
The assumption is that if it is understandable in corporate India, it should be understandable in franchise cricket too. The only difference is that the Mumbai Indians fans are not like the Reliance Industries shareholders at an AGM, cheering Mukesh Ambani’s every money-spinning, share-price boosting announcement. These fans don’t live in the hard world of dumping a fading brand overnight in favour of a shiny new rising brand, or in the world of ruthless corporate style sackings of revered captains, or in a world where decisions are taken behind closed doors and the fans have to just lump it.
Hidden in the anger and emotions of the fans is a message for the MI bosses – we turn up and fill the stadiums. We are the crores of eyeballs watching on tv and on live-streaming feeds on mobile phones. We buy the MI merchandise, we follow the teams and champion players in our millions on social media. Our enthusiasm creates the brand value of the Mumbai Indians (along with the performance of the players and team, of course). That brand value is what you sell to sponsors. So, in a very direct way, you are making big money as a franchise because of us. And so, when you take calls that affect us fans, don’t assume that we don’t deserve answers.
But fans must introspect too
What’s needed is more maturity from the fans and a better understanding of their clout. They need to understand that they can and must feel free to ask the MI bosses tough questions, and demand answers. They must also understand that just making Pandya the whipping boy of their anger, is immature and unfair. And of course, they must understand that the use of casteist slurs to target a player is totally unacceptable, and reduces them from fans to boors.
From the fans, lets move to the players. Yes, they are professionals and should understand the dynamics of franchise cricket. But almost all of them are young, focused on their game and practice and fitness. They often don’t get the cold logic of ‘moolah driven’ cricket. When their roles are changed, when they are picked or dropped, when form deserts them or even when they run into a rich vein of form becoming the ‘flavour of the day’ – through all of this they need transparency and sensitive ‘man management’.
Being a franchise cricketer is not easy
The pressure of playing to ‘justify’ a high auction price, or the pressure to perform to boost one’s chances at the next auction – these young players need guidance through all this. Opaque corporate franchise managers taking ruthless calls behind closed doors can ruin careers. In the bargain, not just the franchise, even India could lose out on great budding talent.
Let’s also understand that IPL is just a two-month circus. For the rest of the year, these players are expected to forget franchise loyalties and combine as Team India. But like it or not, any mis-management or unresolved friction that’s created during or due to the IPL, can undermine the morale of Team India as well.
Franchise ‘politics’ should not hurt Team India
It should be a real concern for all of us cricket fans because the T20 World Cup follows IPL 2024. Have Sharma and Pandya been able to resolve their issues? We don’t know. While Sharma hasn’t commented on losing the captaincy, his wife did put out an ‘unhappy’ tweet at the time. And Sharma hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to fully back Pandya before the media.
Also, team mates and long term loyal and successful Mumbai Indian players – Suryakumar Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah – who may have expected the MI captaincy at some point, could be disappointed with Pandya’s return. But have their concerns and disappointments been addressed by the MI bosses? We don’t know.
And yet, they are expected to play as a cohesive, focused and professional cricket unit to win us the T20 World Cup. Can we really expect that, if we have not been professional and transparent in our handling of them? Not really. And so, if we fail at the T20 World Cup, if we choke, or do not combine as a unit at key moments, whom will we blame, whose heads will roll? It will be the players, isn’t it?
So, let’s use this Pandya and Mumbai Indians captaincy episode and all its ugliness as a learning. Let’s manage our cricket and our players a lot better. Or else, beware the fans, yet again.
Rohit Khanna is a journalist and video storyteller. He has been managing editor of The Quint, and is a two-time Ramnath Goenka Award winner.