Trade… Transfer… Till now we used to hear such words often in football or other sports. Where apart from international games, private leagues dominate, but now Indian fans will also start getting used to it. Because the entire game of trade and transfer has now turned to cricket and the same words are being heard in the Indian Premier League for the last few days, and the biggest reason for this is Hardik Pandya. Hardik Pandya, who was out of the World Cup due to injury, is away from cricket, but the headlines remained with him. Because now the biggest question is that in which team is Hardik Pandya in IPL.
Amidst all the confusion, it is important to know what has happened so far in this episode, where did this story start and how a new trend is going to start in IPL. And it is also important to know for which team Hardik Pandya will play.
What is the latest update regarding Hardik Pandya?
The auction for IPL 2024 is to be held on December 19, before that all the teams had to submit the list of released and retained players by November 26. Two-three days before the list came out, there was news that Hardik Pandya was leaving his team Gujarat Titans and would join his old team Mumbai Indians. Many things happened, but when Gujarat Titans released their list, Hardik Pandya was retained. However, after a few hours it was claimed that despite the retention, Gujarat Titans have traded Hardik Pandya to Mumbai Indians. This means that in the next season, Hardik Pandya will now be seen playing for Mumbai Indians. However, it has not been officially announced yet. Officially, Hardik is still with Gujarat.
What is the game of retain, trade and transfer?
Till now the rule in IPL was that if you are keeping a player with you, then retain him and if you are not keeping him, then release him. But in the meantime, since IPL is now opening and direct dealings are taking place between the teams, then the game of trade has started. That is, in this there is a mutual agreement between two teams to buy or exchange any player. When both the teams reach a decision, then the information is given to the IPL Governing Council.
Two types of things are seen in such trade or transfer, first you trade a player at his own price and in return give a player to another team. Or you can buy the player separately in all cash mode, which seems to be happening with Hardik Pandya so far. For example, Hardik Pandya has been retained by Gujarat Titans, his IPL package is Rs 15 crore.
This means that now when Mumbai Indians will buy Hardik Pandya from Gujarat Titans, then it will have to pay a fee of Rs 15 crore in cash, apart from this Gujarat Titans will also get transfer fee. Now this fee can be as low as Re 1 or as much as Gujarat demands, it will be different from the fixed purse of any team and can be any amount. Apart from this, there will also be an agreement between Gujarat Titans and Hardik Pandya, if Gujarat wants, Hardik can also get some part of this transfer fee. That means the transfer fee will not be included in the auction purse of Mumbai Indians, only Hardik’s fee will be included.
Which team retained how many players, read the list here
What is Hardik’s future in Mumbai Indians?
Hardik Pandya got recognition in the cricket world only because of Mumbai Indians, because this team had given him a chance in the beginning. However, before 2022, Hardik parted ways and he joined Gujarat Titans. He won the title for his team in the very first season and took it to the finals in the second season also. That means Hardik Pandya was successful in establishing himself as an all-rounder as well as in a leadership role.
Now if Hardik Pandya is coming back to Mumbai Indians, then it is believed that the team has started searching for an alternative to Rohit Sharma. Rohit’s age has crossed 35, he has been the captain of the team for the last 10 years. In such a situation, now the management is trying to choose such a player ahead of him, who can lead the team for a long time and Hardik seems to be a better option.
According to some reports, Hardik had left the Mumbai team for the same reason because he wanted to become the captain of the team but the management was not ready to remove Rohit immediately. Now perhaps if this does not happen this season, then in the next season we may see Rohit Sharma handing over the captaincy baton to some other player and Hardik considers himself perfect in this role. It is also worth noting that after proving his captaincy in the IPL itself, Hardik Pandya got the T20 captaincy of Team India, now when players like Rohit-Kohli are seen moving away from T20, it seems that It is believed that Hardik will be seen as the long term captain of Team India in T-20 International.
Mumbai Indians have retained these players: Rohit Sharma, Dewald Brewis, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Tilak Verma, Tim David, Cameron Green, Arjun Tendulkar, Vishnu Vinod, Shams Mulani, Nehal Wadhera, Jasprit Bumrah, Kumar Karthikeya, Piyush Chawla, Akash Madhwal, Jason Behrendorff.
- Total players on Mumbai- 17
- Balance in purse- 15.25 crores
- empty space- 8 players
