Exactly 30 years ago to the day, India won the Hero Cup against West Indies at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Vinod Kambli’s patient 68 led the way with the bat, while Anil Kumble (6-12) and Kapil Dev (2-18) were the wreckers with the ball. The identity of those wicket-takers is especially important given the tug-of-war we just saw played out between Gujarat Titans and Mumbai Indians for the services of Hardik Pandya.
Injured at a critical juncture of the World Cup – is there an Indian fan alive who doesn’t imagine a what-if where he and not Suryakumar Yadav had walked out at No. 6 in the final? – Pandya is expected to lead India at the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the United States next summer, as they seek to end a global-trophy drought that has now truly assumed albatross-around-neck proportions.
But before that, there is the small matter of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The Titans did their best to extract every last penny from Mumbai, and not without reason. What they had done wasn’t just give Hardik his first taste of big-stage leadership experience, in front of capacity crowds in his home state and at the helm of an expansion team that confounded all expectations. They made him one of Indian cricket’s faces. In Mumbai, he had been one among a galaxy of stars. In Gujarat, he was undoubtedly the leader and main man. In the years to come, if anyone addresses the making of Hardik the captain, they will first look at the two incredible seasons in Ahmedabad.
Mumbai’s interest in taking Hardik back isn’t hard to fathom. Rohit Sharma will turn 37 during the next IPL, and while he may have to push on a season or more because of contractual obligations, it’s quite apparent that the team needs a reset. Since their fifth title in 2020, Mumbai have rarely been competitive, and it’s no reflection at all of Rohit’s leadership skills to say that the dressing room could do with a new voice setting the agenda. Ian Chappell, one of the most perceptive minds in the game, always used to say that a captain’s shelf life is around five years. Rohit has led Mumbai for twice that time and more. His own game, pushed into the background amid the search for results, might benefit greatly from handing over the reins to someone else.
The Titans’ brains trust, especially Ashish Nehra, deserve huge credit for the squad they put together, but this was very much Hardik’s team. If you’re a Mumbai fan, the numbers make for sobering reading. In the two seasons after Hardik moved to Gujarat, the new franchise won 20 regular-season games while reaching back-to-back finals. But for a rain-reduced target and a freakish innings from Ravindra Jadeja, they could well have had consecutive titles.
In that time, Mumbai won 12 regular-season games. In Qualifier 2 of the play-offs in 2023, Titans thumped them by 62 runs, with Hardik contributing a 13-ball 28 at the end. It was the strongest possible reminder that the balance of power had shifted. But Hardik’s own numbers, especially with ball in hand, dropped significantly in 2023, in comparison to his stellar campaign – 487 runs and eight wickets – the previous season.
This was why that long-ago Hero Cup was mentioned at the start of this article. Neither Kapil’s leadership qualities nor his all-round skills need validation from anyone. His body of work is there for all to see. But we don’t always think of Kumble as one of India’s great all-rounders. Such was his prowess with the ball that we forget he was India’s only Test centurion on the tour of England in 2007, and the dignity with which he led through the Monkeygate fiasco in Sydney a few months later.
Kumble, of course, played in the IPL, taking scarcely belieavable figures of 5-5 in the second edition in South Africa, when he led what had been the inaugural year’s joke franchise to the final. As for Kapil, we can only speculate what sort of bidding war his talents might have sparked in his prime.
Hardik turned 30 last month, and could conceivably lead Mumbai for another half-decade. The Titans, who aren’t shy of mentioning their role in his evolution as white-ball captain, will look to the future with Shubman Gill. In Kane Williamson, Mohammed Shami and Rashid Khan, there are enough gnarled hands around to help him settle in. But given his frequent injury woes, is Hardik worth such a massive outlay on Mumbai’s part? Having been bitten by the Jofra Archer saga and the dream new-ball pairing that never was, could they live to regret this investment?
One thing is certain. When Lalit Modi put the league’s building blocks together, he envisaged a no-relegation tournament run on the lines of North America’s American Football, basketball and baseball leagues. The NFL draft months before the season begins remains one of the highlights of the US’s TV programming. But the IPL chose not to go down the route of favouring the least-successful teams. What we saw play out instead on Sunday was drama similar to European football’s summer transfer window.
The will-he-won’t-he speculation that runs for two months and more has made stars out of even journalists like Fabrizio Romano. Many deals go right to the wire at 11pm on the final night. But as we’ve seen over the past couple of seasons with Aurilien Tchouameni and Jude Bellingham, what Real Madrid want, they usually get. Mumbai Indians, with a similarly unmatched bouquet of sponsors, are the IPL’s equivalent. Hardik, in Tom Cruise-Jerry Maguire style may have said: “Show me the money.” Mumbai did, and what we saw after that was how the IPL dominates headlines even months before the first ball of the season is bowled.