Eight years ago, Hardik Pandya walked into an illustrious Mumbai Indians dressing room with his heartbeat racing and mind freezing. He returns to the same place, where there are still illustrious names, but as the team’s all-powerful captain. Between the summer of 2015 and the winter of 2023, Pandya emerged as one of the most skilled all-rounders in the world, bestowed with a personality that burnishes his gifts. An occasionally controversial figure but always an colourful personality, he returns not as the prodigal son but as a proven one, after two successful years with Gujarat Titans.
There would not have been a more fitting candidate to succeed Rohit Sharma, in terms of stature, aura and the inside knowledge of how the club functions. Hardik need not get familiarized with the dressing room, or the dressing room with him. He was that immovable piece of furniture you had lend to the neighbour for a wedding. Or Hardik returning from a lengthy injury layoff rather than spending time polishing his leadership craft with another franchise.
Even the Titans group he forged in the image of Mumbai Indians, stoked in the Rohit brand of captaincy. In his persistence with youth, in his faith in the players he has picked, in his hands-on approach, there were shades of Rohit, like virtuosos from the same gharana. Not that Hardik is a Rohit-clone, but there are lines that overlap. They are antithetical too—Pandya is a firebrand; Rohit the cool-head. But you see the influences, and Rohit’s presence could be the ice to Hardik’s fire.