IPL 2024: Why Rohit Sharma Was Removed As Mumbai Indians? Final Reason Revealed

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IPL 2024: Mumbai Indians (MI) head coach Mark Boucher has revealed the real reason why Rohit Sharma was removed as the captain of the five-time champions. He said the reason was completely cricketing in nature.

Mark Boucher said Mumbai Indians are going through a transition period, and it was important to bring out the best from Rohit Sharma as a player with Hardik Pandya at the helm.

"I think it was purely a cricketing decision. We saw the window period to get Hardik back as a player. For me it's a transition phase. A lot of people don't understand in India, people get quite emotional, but you know you take the emotions away from it. I think it's just more of a cricketing decision that was made and I do think it is going to bring the best out of Rohit as a person as a player. Just let him go out and enjoy and score some good runs," Mark Boucher said on Smash Sports podcast.

Further, Mark Boucher said that management had the idea to give Rohit Sharma space away from the hype of captaincy, and bring the best out of him as a batter. Notably, the 36-year-old scored 268 at a strike rate of 120.18 in 2022 when his team finished bottom of the table. In the IPL 2023 season, he scored 332 runs at 132.80.

Want Rohit Sharma to enjoy batting without burden of captaincy

"One thing I did pick up with Ro (Rohit) is that he is a fantastic guy. I mean he's been captaining for ages and he's done really well for Mumbai Indians. Now he also leads India as well. It is that he walks into a place and there's just cameras in it and he's so busy and he hasn't had probably the best couple of seasons of late with the bat but he's done well as a captain.

"And I just thought you know when we're speaking with the whole Mumbai Indians group, we thought that maybe this is the opportunity for him to step as a player. We believe he got some great value to add and just go out there and actually enjoy it without the hype of being a captain," Boucher said.

Mark Bucher also praised Hardik Pandya who was traded from Gujarat Titans (GT). He left MI ahead of the IPL 2022 with captaincy and led GT to title win in their maiden campaign. Gujarat Titans finished as runners-up in 2023.

"He is a Mumbai Indians boy. He went to other franchise, won the title in first year, ended up runners-up in his second year. So there's obviously some very good leadership skills as well," Boucher said.