Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya is having the toughest season of his life in the Indian Premier League this year due to his team's repeated losses and constant criticism regarding the change in leadership before IPL 2024.
Pandya has been booed and heckled in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and by MI's home fans at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. IPL's newest stadium in Mullanpur has now joined the unfortunate list of grounds where the 33-year-old received a hostile reception.
A new video has surfaced from last week which shows a fan taunting Pandya before he went out to bat against Punjab.
Pandya can be seen practicing his shots and loosening his body as he prepared to go out to bat but a fan constantly kept saying negative things at the cricketer and even made a video of the incident.
From his poor form with the bat and ball to his antics amid all the criticism, the fan tried his best to get under Pandya's skin but remained the MI skipper remained completely unaware of the taunts and carried on with his pre-batting routine.
The Free Press Journal however, cannot confirm the authenticity of this clip.
Fortunately for Pandya, his team managed to register a 3-wicket win over Punjab in a thrilling clash which went down to the wire.
MI rode on Suryakumar Yadav's 53-ball 78 (7x4s, 3x6s) and Rohit Sharma's 36 to post 192 for 7 in 20 overs after being put into bat by Sam Curran.
PBKS in reply, got close to the target thanks to Ashutosh Sharma's valiant 61 but fell short by 9 runs in the end. Pandya managed to pick up a wicket but flopped again with the bat, scoring just 10 runs in MI's total.
MI however, lost their next game against the Rajasthan Royals comprehensively and are currently languishing in 7th place on the points table with three wins from 8 games so far. They will next face the Delhi Capitals in the national capital on April 27.
