Cricket News: The Mumbai Indians may have had their worst season in the Indian Premier League (IPL), but they still have two games left to avoid the wooden spoon. Despite the bad performance, Shaun Pollock, a South African cricket star, praised Rohit Sharma for his captaincy throughout the years and how he has successfully improved the franchise since joining the Mumbai Indians in 2011.
Rohit’s IPL career did not begin with the Mumbai Indians. Deccan Chargers selected him in the first draught, and he spent three seasons with the team before joining MI in 2011. In 2013, he was named captain, succeeding Ricky Ponting, and guided Mumbai to their first-ever title in the following season.
Pollock remembered how the young batter impressed him with his leadership skills back in 2011 and how MI had already designated him as a potential franchise leader.
“We definitely identified him in the early years as a person who could be a possible captain. He was in our selection panel in the two years that I was there, in 2011 and 2012. He was very mature beyond his years in many ways. Whether he was able to do the captaincy or wanted to do it as early as he could, that was going to be the big question. But since he’s taken over, he has delivered five titles. He has gone from strength to strength and his performances have been great as well. He’s been fantastic for the Mumbai franchise, as Dhoni has been for CSK,” he told Cricbuzz.
It’s never easy to replace a great in cricket, let alone a captain, but Pollock said Rohit had settled in nicely after taking over from Ponting.
“From a leadership perspective, he settled on his own style quite quickly. He managed to implement that and stick with that. At the time (he took over), Ricky Ponting was playing at that stage. That would have helped a little bit from the thought process perspective. He’s done fantastically well,” he said.
After winning the 2007 T20 World Cup for India, the former MI captain added that Rohit has already earned the respect of his teammates. He had previously won the IPL with the Deccan Chargers.
“He seemed a bit unflappable in many ways. He was a character who was very calm in the background. He’d have a few cricketing discussions and the reasoning behind some of the decisions that he suggested be made had some really good cricketing sense. He commanded that respect. He played in that T20 World Cup that they ended up winning. He couldn’t have been more than 19-20 at the time. Everyone respected him and thought highly of him as a cricketer and as a thinker as well.”
