IPL 2026: Did Mumbai Indians bring back the wrong Pandya?

Engine room. Krunal Pandya spoke about the Mumbai Indians engine room. Kieron Pollard has teamed up with two Baroda boys – a legendary all-rounder flanked by a fast and spin-bowling all-rounder. It felt more like family than anything else. If you got past Rohit Sharma, there was Suryakumar Yadav. If you got through Suryakumar, there was an engine house that often drove Indians home from Bombay. RCB vs MI: HIGHLIGHTS | SCORECARD

With Pollard and the Pandya brothers forming the backbone of the middle order, Mumbai Indians won three titles: 2016, 2019 and 2020.

“I had my best six years at MI. I remember the Pandya brothers and Kieron Pollard were the engine room. We won a lot of matches with the bat, the ball and the field. I still remember in 2021 when we played our last match, all three of us were holding hands and we felt like, OK, this is the last time we’re going to play together.” after a match winning match for Royal Challengers Bengaluru – this time and with no small irony against his former team.

Mumbai Indians have not been the same since the engine room was dismantled. Hardik Pandya left for Gujarat Titans. The crown was not preserved. Age caught up with Pollard. Together, they would patch up each other’s cracks; apart, the cracks only widened.

Between 2016 and 2021 (engine room era): MI won 42 out of 70 matches. Win/Loss Ratio: 1.75.
In the years 2022 to 2026 (engine room post): MI won 29 out of 70. Win/Lost Ratio: 0.69.

Cut to 2026 and the Mumbai Indians are out of the playoffs for the third time since 2022. They may end up with a wooden spoon this season, having won just three of their first eleven games. The five-time champions, the tournament’s gold standard for decades, are in danger of becoming also-rans.

Yes, the engine room was gone – but the problems have multiplied since then. Poor auctions. Units that shone on paper and crumbled in the heat of competition. Play-offs, forever tantalizingly close, forever out of reach.

Fingers are slowly but surely pointing at Hardik Pandya – their captain. Rumors of him unfollowing the franchise on Instagram started flying on Sunday night, minutes after they lost to RCB in Raipur and their mathematical playoff chances went up in smoke. We couldn’t help but notice the symbolism: the captain, seemingly, was cutting the last cord.

This comparison has always occurred, sooner or later. Two brothers. Two ways. One franchise that had to choose, and in hindsight, may have chosen poorly.

The connection is hard to ignore.

From Mumbai Indians made history by trading Hardik Pandya back from Gujarat Titans – where he led them to the title in 2022 – things just didn’t go as planned. Was it necessary to bring Hardik back into the mix when they had Cameron Green who was eventually traded?

They handed over the reins to Hardik and asked Rohit Sharma, their most decorated captain, to take a back seat. In return, the Baroda all-rounder has struggled: as a captain, as a batsman, as a bowler – a multidimensional brilliance that once defined him by flickering, dimming, rarely flaring up when it mattered most.

In three seasons as captain, Hardik has led MI to the playoffs only once. They are set to finish in the bottom two for the second time in three years. Worst of all, the five-time champions’ title drought has now stretched to six years.

Hardik as MI captain – Played: 37. Wins: 15. Lost: 22.

Of course, there is no single villain. Poor auction strategy, out-of-form stars and whispers of a broken dressing room are offered as explanations. But the bottom line remains: Hardik has come nowhere close to replicating the alchemy he conjured at Gujarat Titans. Hardik Pandya tried to lead MI to success (PTI Photo)

THE SECOND PANDYA

Now look at the other one.

After leaving MI, Krunal had a modest stint with Lucknow Super Giants – solid enough, but hardly headline-grabbing – around the same time Hardik won the title in his debut season with Gujarat Titans, before leading them to the finals the following year. Two brothers, both far removed from the franchise that shaped them, but on vastly different trajectories. Hardik was rising; Krunal was finding his feet. Then came the second wind in RCB, quieter, less heralded but no less real, and suddenly the gap between them began to close in a way no one had anticipated.

The numbers placed next to each other are instructive:

Hardik for MI since his return: 556 runs in 33 innings at an average of 16.84; 29 goals in 37 games.
Crowned for RCB: 250 runs in 13 innings at an average of 19.23; 27 goals in 26 games.

But as always, numbers only tell half the story. The other half lives in the gaps between what a player means to the team, not just what he gives them.

At RCB, Krunal was handed something his previous franchises withheld: permission to attack with the ball. Earlier in his career, he was deployed as a defensive pitcher, a reliever, a stopper in the bullpen. He excelled in that role – but the responsibility of running the offense unlocked something deeper inside him, something he calls his mental laboratory. His The bouncer, bowled at over 100km/h, became the talk of the tournament. The left arm spreader added a weapon and with it a new dimension of threat. Krunal Pandya was a force with the ball for RCB (PTI Photo)

At 35 years of age, Krunal has kept himself in remarkable physical shape, ensuring that his body agrees with what his mind envisions. He talked about it earlier this season in Delhi – that thoughtfulness, that almost dogged insistence on reinvention. When considered alongside Hardik’s trajectory, it’s a fascinating divergence: one brother at the height of his powers, the other looking for a foothold.

STREET FIGHTER

Batting on Sunday, Krunal reminded everyone why he is talked about in the same breath as the clutch greats in IPL history.

Raipur’s surface was a far cry from the batting havens seen elsewhere this season – double pace, uneven, an overall more unforgiving arena. RCB’s top order quickly found out. At 39 for 3, with Kohli, Padikkal and Patidar all back in the dugout, a collapse seemed not only possible but inevitable chasing 167. Enter Krunal Pandya.

What followed was a self-control master class. Eschewing the reckless aggression that destroyed his predecessors, he chose instead to apply, hone, anchor. He made 73 off 46 balls – a spin strike with clinical efficiency, building a partnership from the rubble, pulling RCB back into the game one calculated run after another.

But what made the knock truly memorable was the physical toll it took. As the game reached its climax, Krunal was visibly struggling with crippling cramps that spread from his calves to his back; at one point he collapsed after a sharp bouncer and the body finally complained. Recognizing that his mobility was gone, he decided, as someone who had spent a career in these moments, to finish it to his liking.

In the 18th over, the match took a turn. Barely able to stand, he cleared his front foot and hit Allah Ghazanfar for two towering sixes, changing the momentum irrevocably, almost violently. By the time he was leaving, he had pulled a sinking ship ashore. Others may have more taste. Few, very few people have more heart when the pressure is on.

Meanwhile, Hardik was watching from somewhere else. One imagines that he watched him closely.

It is no coincidence that Krunal loves the big stage. He is the only man in IPL history with two Player of the Match awards in the finals – 2017 with MI, 2025 with RCB. The tournament’s great opportunities seem to find him, or maybe it’s the other way around.

“This game has to be a tick for Krunal Pandya. He wanted it badly – it showed in his eyes. Street fighters come through in tough games. He certainly had it today,” said Mark Boucher on JioHotstar.

R Ashwin calls him the perfect pressure manager. There is perhaps no higher compliment in this format.

Krunal didn’t always stand out at RCB, but he was a perfect cog in the well-oiled machine that was part of the new engine room and hummed along quietly. He’s not the loudest in that locker room. It doesn’t have to be.

EFFECTIVE PANDYA

And noise, as they say, will not go unheard. While Hardik Pandya remains a key part of India’s white-ball set-up, a status he has somehow maintained despite a prolonged slump at MI, Krunal is once again knocking on the selectors’ door, now louder, more urgently.

“When I started playing cricket, my biggest dream was to play for India. That hasn’t changed. My goal is 100 per cent to play for this country. The World Cup is coming up next year. Fingers crossed – I want to continue to do well and hopefully I will get that opportunity,” he said after his match-winning knock in Raipur.

“It would be pretty special and wonderful for me and my family. I just want to continue with what’s in my hands: play well, continue to do well.”

Just a man, at 35, still within reach.

Mumbai Indians brought back Pandya. They brought back the famous one, the decorated one, the one whose name arrived with fanfare and a trade that made headlines across the country. And maybe that was the plan all along—an obvious move, a crowd-pleasing move.

But sports have a way of complicating the obvious. While Hardik has captained MI to mediocrity, Krunal has quietly, stubbornly, beautifully rebuilt himself into one of the indispensable players in the league.

Two brothers. Two ways. One question that Indians in Mumbai may have been trying to answer for years. Did they bring back the wrong Pandya?

– The end

Issued by:

Akshay Ramesh

Published on:

11 May 2026 11:00 AM IST