IPL 2021: Rohit Sharma’s die-hard fan performs aarti for Mumbai Indians

Rohit Sharma’s Mumbai Indians (MI) have a massive fandom after having won as many as five titles in the Indian Premier League (IPL) since 2013. In 2019 and 2020, they went on to win the championship as well. But the 2021 edition of the T20 league didn’t start on a happy note for them as they lost to the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by two wickets in Chennai.

Rohit also couldn’t an impact with the bat after he got run out following his 15-ball 19 with a four and a six. In the meantime, a video where one of Rohit’s ardent fans can be seen performing aarti when he came to bat in MI’s opening game at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. The clip didn’t take time in going viral on the microblogging sites.

We were 20 runs short: Rohit Sharma

The game on Friday turned out to be an absolute humdinger. The match went right down to the last ball and it was Virat Kohli’s RCB, who came out trumps. Despite not being able to cross the finishing hurdle, Rohit was happy with his team’s effort.

The veteran also had words of praises for Marco Jansen, who picked up a couple of important wickets on his IPL debut at the Chepauk. Moreover, Rohit didn’t forget to laud AB de Villiers, who scored a match-winning 27-ball 48 at a stage when RCB were seeming to get behind the 8-ball.

“That’s the most important thing I guess (to win tournaments). Not the first game. I thought it was a great effort. I thought we were 20 runs short with the kind of start we got. We made some mistakes in the first game, bound to happen. He’s (Jansen) a talent we have identified to bowl in any situation,” Rohit said after the game.

“We wanted to get wickets when AB and Christian were batting, which is why we went with Bumrah and Boult, unfortunately, it didn’t work. Definitely not an easy pitch to bat on. We need to identify the situations and get variations.

“AB was brilliant and got them home. In hindsight, you can say it takes time to get intensity. But there are fresh faces. A lot of players were playing international cricket and we have not had time to get to know each other very well,” he added.