Ritika Sajdeh reacts to Mark Boucher explaining why Mumbai Indians replaced Rohit Sharma as captain

Ritika Sajdeh, wife of India captain Rohit Sharma, has hit back at Mumbai Indians coach Mark Boucher for his explanation on why the senior cricket was replaced as captain at the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise by Hardik Pandya. MI have appointed Pandya as captain for the upcoming seasons, replacing Rohit, who led the team to record five titles. Pandya has been given the captaincy on his return from Gujarat Titans (GT) with whom he spent two seasons and won the IPL titles in first time as a captain and also took them to final in 2023.

Boucher while explaining the team’s decision said suggested that Rohit, who also captains India, gets so caught up with off the field activities that probably it impacted his game. Rohit scored just 268 runs at a strike rate of 120.18 in IPL 2022 and amassed 332 runs at 132.80 in 2023.

Rohit’s Ritika, however, didn’t seem very impressed with Boucher’s explanation and made her feeling clear in the comments section of the Boucher video posted by SmashSports podcast.

“So many things wrong with this,” she wrote.

Ritika’s comments has added more fuel to the rumours that Rohit is unhappy with his demotion at the franchise and also led to fans blasting Boucher for his explanation.

Here’s what Boucher said:

“I think it was purely a cricketing decision. We saw the window period to get Hardik back as a player. For me it’s a transition phase. A lot of people don’t understand in India, people get quite emotional, but you know you take the emotions away from it. I think it’s just more of a cricketing decision that was made and I do think it is going to bring the best out of Rohit as a person as a player. Just let him go out and enjoy and score some good runs,” = Boucher said while explaining his decision.

“One thing I did pick up with Ro (Rohit) is that he is a fantastic guy. I mean he’s been captaining for ages and he’s done really well for Mumbai Indians. Now he also leads India as well. It is that he walks into a place and there’s just cameras in it and he’s so busy and he hasn’t had probably the best couple of seasons of late with the bat but he’s done well as a captain.

“And I just thought you know when we’re speaking with the whole Mumbai Indians group, we thought that maybe this is the opportunity for him to step as a player. We believe he got some great value to add and just go out there and actually enjoy it without the hype of being a captain.

“He is still going to captain India so that hype’s going be there but when he steps into the IPL maybe just taking that extra bit of pressure off him as a captain an maybe we get the best out of Rohit Sharma. We want to see him playing with a smile on his face, spending a bit of time with his beautiful family,” Boucher said