Mumbai Indians welcomed Rohit Sharma back into the fold in the match against Lucknow Super Giants at the Wankhede on Monday. Rohit, who hasn’t played for close to three weeks after suffering a hamstring injury, is likely to slot in at the top of the order with Ryan Rickelton. “Corbin Bosch comes in for Trent Boult and also our very own Rohit Sharma is back,” stand-in skipper Suryakumar Yadav said at the toss.
Mumbai, however, will be without regular skipper Hardik Pandya, who wasn’t feeling well, according to Surya. He’s (Hardik) not well tonight, so just going into his shoes. But yeah, the rest, everything is fine,” he said.
On April 12, Rohit was batting on 19 off 13 balls when he limped off the field in MI’s chase of a mammoth target of 241 against RCB on April 12. MI went on to lose the match by 18 runs. He seemed to be fine for much of the game and fielded for the entirety of the RCB innings.
He was running normally for the first four overs of the MI chase. The 38-year-old started limping while running a leg bye off the fourth ball of the fifth over. He was looking just as ginger taking a single next ball and received some treatment before the start of the next over. Despite that, Rohit seemed to be in trouble as he took strike off the first ball and then went off the field after blocking out the second.
On Sunday, Rohit and head coach Mahela Jayawardene had turned up at the team’s home ground. Rohit had begun with light warm-ups along with two members of the support staff in tow and did some light running before having a short stint in the nets with the bat.
Ahead of the Chennai Super Kings match, Jayawardene had said the medical team would take a call on his participation in that match on Saturday. “It’s progressed well. He’s like working really hard to get back at it. So for us with the medical team, it’s on a daily basis. We see how he feels, how he pulls up the next day. So we’ll make a decision. We’ll see him practising today as well. So let’s see how he feels tomorrow and what the medical team will tell us,” Jayawardene said. Ultimately the former MI captain did not take part in the El Clasico on Saturday.
