Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya and coach Mark Boucher addressed their first ever press conference on Monday after taking over the top posts in the team but the franchise kept shielding the duo from questions on Rohit Sharma and the change in leadership.
The Free Press Journal was also present at the presser which was held at their team hotel in Mumbai.
During the question and answer round, our journalist asked Pandya "whether there was a captaincy clause in his contract" before he returned to the franchise.
MI shields Pandya from tough questions
But MI's PR team stopped the journalist from asking the full question by saying that Pandya had already spoken about his captaincy at the start of the press conference.
Pandya did take questions on the change in guard at MI and the backlash he received after replacing Rohit Sharma as the team captain ahead of IPL 2024.
But the PR team of the franchise was very strict with the questions being asked and stopped several other journalists from asking anything related to Pandya's captaincy and the controversy surrounding it in the second half of the press conference.
Pandya returned to MI after spending 2 seasons at Gujarat Titans. When he decided to return to MI, there were rumours doing the rounds that he had included a captaincy clause in his contract.
The star all-rounder was traded to MI for a price of ₹15 crore.
MI will open their IPL 2024 campaign against Pandya's previous franchise Gujarat Titans on March 24. He won the title with GT in their maiden season in 2022 and will be looking to clinch MI's sixth trophy this year.
