New Delhi: Post the T20 World Cup 2022, the Men in Blue started off their campaign as they are facing New Zealand. Hardik Pandya has been asked to lead the side while senior players like Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma have been rested. There are a number of former cricketers who have praised Hardik to succeed Rohit as India's skipper in the shortest format. However, former Pakistan player Salman Butt is not satisfied with Pandya as a skipper.
Butt on his YouTube channel said, "I don't know who is seeing him as captain and who is watching such dreams. He has talent and has tasted success in the IPL. But even Rohit Sharma has been successful five to six times in the IPL. If he had scored well in a couple of matches (in the T20 World Cup 2022), people wouldn't have been talking about making this change at the top”.
"In the Asian subcontinent, people start talking about such drastic and big changes rather soon. Not all of them, but quite a few, who probably don't understand how these things work. Sometimes, just for the sake of giving an opinion, people say, 'change the captain'," he added.
"Only one captain has won the World Cup, the rest of the teams have lost. Will you change the captains of all 11 teams because they lost the World Cup?", he stated.
Hardik was supposed to lead the Men in Blue in the first T20I against New Zealand on Friday but the match was abandoned due to continuous rain in Wellington.
India squad: Hardik Pandya (C), Rishabh Pant (vc & wk), Shubman Gill, Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Surya Kumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson (wk), W Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Harshal Patel, Mohd. Siraj, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umran Malik.