I felt Rohit Sharma might leave captaincy before IPL 2022 just like Virat Kohli did: Sanjay Manjrekar

Former India player and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar has stated that he felt ahead of IPL 2022, Rohit Sharma might follow Virat Kohli’s footsteps and decide to hand over the Mumbai Indians’ captaincy baton to Kieron Pollard to focus purely on his batting. It is to be noted that Rohit is struggling immensely as a batter for Mumbai Indians over the last couple of seasons.

On Tuesday (April 12), Manjrekar commented on the matter, and adding to it he said that the all-rounder Kieron Pollard adds a lot of value to the team’s set-up. He also revealed that he had envisioned a leadership role for the Caribbean player, even after his poor run this season- 47 runs in four innings so far. Manjrekar feels that Pollard just needs one good game to get back his usual form, and feels that the 34-year-old is doing his job well.

“I feel Pollard still adds value. [Before the season] I even felt Rohit Sharma might leave captaincy like Virat Kohli, relax a bit, play as a pure batter and hand the responsibility to Pollard who is a brilliant international captain,” Manjrekar told ESPNCricinfo.

“Pollard still has the capability, I can see that from the sixes he hits. He’ll contribute in the pressure match, the crunch game. But they need to reach there first and that’s not on Pollard, it never has been. He’s never contributed throughout the season for Mumbai Indians. He plays one innings in a pressure game and sees the team through. Others need to work better because Pollard is doing his usual job,” he added.

Manjrekar feels Rohit Sharma should be more selfish and bat freely

After Kohli stepped down from his captaincy role with the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Indian team’s T20 side, he was shortly replaced by Rohit Sharma in the Tests and ODI formats too. While Sharma was named India’s all-formats captain, Faf du Plessis was declared as Virat’s successor at the RCB camp.

Sharma has had a good run with his national side, but he has been struggling with MI in the IPL 2022 as the five-time champions are yet to open their account and are placed last in the points table. Speaking of Sharma’s form with the bat, Manjrekar felt that the skipper, and opening batter, will have to open up and bring out his game to perform freely.

“His record has been like this for the last 3-4 seasons, average less than 30, strike-rate not 150 or 160. When he plays for India his numbers get better… because then he only thinks about himself and less about the team. When playing IPL, he tries to play the anchor role similar to what KL Rahul did with Punjab Kings and Hardik Pandya did in the last matc. If he plays freely, we’ll see the Rohit Sharma we see in Indian cricket,” Manjrekar added.