To call Hardik Pandya’s tenure as the captain of Mumbai Indians this season poor wouldn’t be a stretch. But, to call it ‘not genuine’ seems to have ruffled a few feathers including that of Gautam Gambhir, who recently came to the support of Pandya.
Pandya had led MI to one of their most disappointing seasons of the IPL in recent history, standing at an abysmal ninth place with just 8 points after 13 games, also ensuring that they lost out on playoff qualification.
After their loss against table-toppers Kolkata Knight Riders last Saturday, de Villiers took to his YouTube channel, where the Protean mentioned that the current MI skipper’s style of captaincy was ‘ego-driven’ and not always genuine.
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“The captaincy style of Hardik Pandya is quite bravado. It’s ego-driven in a way, chest out,” De Villiers said on his YouTube channel.
“I don’t think how he walks on the field is always genuine, but he has decided that is his way of captaincy. Almost like MS (Dhoni). Cool, calm, collective, always got your chest out.”
But, a spirited Gautam Gambhir, KKR’s head coach currently, came to the defence of Pandya after the comments from de Villiers, stating that the Protean can’t comment on the captaincy of Pandya, if he hadn’t captained in such a capacity in the IPL himself.
“When they themselves did captaincy [were captains], what were their own performances like? I do not think that whether it is Kevin Pietersen or AB de Villiers, there has ever been performances in their careers from a leadership point of view. Nothing. If you look up their records, it would be worse than any other leader,” clapped back Gambhir at de Villiers’ comments on Sportskeeda’s Match Ki Baat.
“I don’t think AB de Villiers has even captained any game in the IPL or ultimately achieved anything apart from his own scores. I do not think he has achieved anything from a team point of view. Hardik Pandya is still an IPL winning captain. So, you should only compare orange to oranges, not apples to oranges.”
Upon witnessing the array of comments and all the retorts sent his way upon his statement, de Villiers once again took to his YouTube channel recently to clear the air and call out those who had twisted his comments on Pandya.
“Why I said it’s always not genuine is because I played exactly the same way. I was not the soft-spoken, genuine AB de Villiers that I was at home. The guy you saw on the field was in a way ‘an act’. Sometimes, you have to put up a front and show the opposition that you are a force to reckon with. That’s what Hardik Pandya does,” stated de Villiers.
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