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Cricket PlayersSimon Doull exposes Mumbai Indians dressing room chaos, deflects blame from Hardik Pandya: ‘Full of alphas’
Simon Doull felt that Hardik Hardik is not the only one to blame and felt that the upper management, ownership decided to appoint him as captain.
Simon Doull feels it's not just Hardik Pandya's fault for Mumbai Indians' disastrous IPL 2026 campaign. MI crashed to their sixth defeat on Wednesday, and it has probably crushed their confidence. It looked like they were set to clinch a win after Ryan Rickelton's 123* took them to 243/5 in 20 overs. But Sunrisers Hyderabad made it look like an easy chasing job as openers Abhishek Sharma (45) and Travis Head (76) handed them a strong start.
Despite Kishan's (golden duck) shock dismissal, SRH kept up the momentum through Heinrich Klaasen (65*), who formed Partnerships with Nitish Kumar Reddy (21) and Salil Arora (30*). Arora faced only 10 balls in the match, and ahead of the 19th, when he retained strike, he had faced six. Hardik decided to bowl and conceded a top-edged four in the first ball and then a six, drilled over wide long-on. The MI captain responded with a dot and was once again slammed for a six, pulled over midwicket as SRH sealed a six-wicket win.
Jasprit Bumrah once again went wicketless, conceded 54 runs in four overs, with an economy of 13.50. In the first innings too, senior player Suryakumar Yadav managed only five runs off five balls, before losing his wicket to Eshan Malinga. Even Tilak Varma registered only seven off five deliveries. Rickelton was key, slamming 123* off 55 balls, packed with 10 fours and eight sixes, striking at 223.64. He remained unbeaten.
'It's a very difficult room, it's full of alphas': Simon Doull
Speaking after the match, Doull felt that Hardik is not the only one to blame and felt that the upper management, ownership decided to appoint him as captain, replacing Rohit Sharma. He also pointed out that the MI dressing room is filled with alpha players, and some of them have captained India too.
“I think the fingers will point to everyone. It starts with the team from a performance point of view. Then it goes to leadership, then upstairs. From an auction point of view, I think they got it right. It looked like a great team on paper. One year is a blip, two years is a concern, three years, that's pretty bad. That's time for change,” he said.
"When they were in their pomp before the new teams came in, it was like a pride of lions, and Hardik was a cub. He was a cub that played a role in the pride of lions. He went away, did a great job at GT with a very new franchise, a franchise that he could kind of own and control. He came back and basically tried to fight the king of the pride for the reigning job, the king's job and it hasn't worked. It just has not worked and so there's got to be some accountability from the very top because the very top made that decision.
"They gave him that responsibility and they allowed him to come back into what they had was a very successful team and a successful franchise. Now in that dressing room, in that environment, you've got four blokes who can all be the king. You have four guys who have all captained their country at different stages. So it's a very difficult room, it's full of alphas. It's a difficult room if things aren't going well."
"The ownership, director of cricket, and manager have got to take the responsibility for what has happened in the last three years", he further added.
