‘From a management perspective…’: Kieron Pollard’s take on captain Hardik Pandya’s 2026 IPL season

Hardik Pandya (Image credit: BCCI/IPL) NEW DELHI: Mumbai Indians suffered a disappointment in the IPL 2026 season and their hopes of a victory were not fulfilled either as the five-time champions suffered yet another defeat in their last match of the league stage.Mumbai Indians finished ninth in the 10-team table after going down to Rajasthan Royals by 30 runs in their final league match of the season. It was MI’s 10th defeat in 14 matches during a memorable campaign. After the loss, Mumbai Indians batting coach Kieron Pollard admitted that captain Hardik Pandya’s leadership did not develop as the player or the franchise would have liked.“From Hardik’s management point of view, yes, it didn’t go as well as he would have liked as an individual,” Pollard said after the match.“Maybe it didn’t go the way we would have liked as executives. But one thing (you should) know is that we tried everything to give him the best opportunity to lead the franchise, to do well.”Pollard insisted that the unfortunate season cannot be blamed on just one individual and described it as a collective failure of the entire Mumbai Indians group.“Nobody’s going to sit here and point the finger. Especially when you lose, you have to look at it from a collective perspective. You win some, you lose some. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t question certain things,” he said.“He (Pandya) tried; we all tried and it just didn’t work out. You sit and talk and (and) see what’s (for) the best. You never know what’s going to happen. For us, let’s just lick our wounds (this time) and hopefully come back stronger in 12 months,” Pollard added.Asked if Mumbai Indians needed a reboot considering the number of senior players in the squad, Pollard said the franchise would first take time to assess what went wrong before making any decision.“Right now is not the time or place to talk about that,” he said.“All of these things would be kind of emotional decisions and thinking about every aspect of what’s needed, everybody needs that time and space to sit down, to remember, to have a fair assessment of where it actually happened for us.”“That’s where better decision-making is going to happen. If you’re sitting here now saying you have to do this, you have to do that, that would be irresponsible from a management perspective,” he added.Mumbai Indians finished third in IPL 2025 but the 2026 season saw a dramatic fall for one of the tournament’s most successful franchises.