Former Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist hit out at Mumbai Indians (MI) captain Hardik Pandya for showcasing “false bravado” and “fake hustle” on the field amid the franchise's poor run in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL).

“For me, the body language was horrible. If I'm the owner or the coach of that team, I'm watching and observing that. I'm going to say, ‘I want answers.' It's cricket! You're paid professionals! I don't want to see laughter. I want to know if that means a bit to you. I don't want to see that jovialness and ‘I don't care' attitude,” Gilchrist said on Cricbuzz.

“You don't want fake hustle. You don't want people putting in effort as if they're trying hard. It's false bravado. It looks a bit manufactured at the moment,” the former Australian wicketkeeper-batter added.

“I am not seeing him (Hardik) strategically getting it right. I think some batting positional changes, some bowling changes at certain times, just overall strategy, I don't think as captain he's quite got it right,” Adam Gilchrist noted.

On the other hand, Pakistan legend Wasim Akram opined that Mumbai Indians should have continued with Rohit Sharma as captain for another year before handing over the reins of the team to Hardik Pandya.

“In franchise cricket, such things happen. Look at how CSK took the captaincy decision in the long run, and maybe even they (MI) had the same idea. This was not a personal decision, but in my view, Rohit Sharma should have continued as captain for one more year. Perhaps Hardik Pandya could have been the captain next year,” Wasim Akram observed.

New Zealand's Simon Doull expressed that Hardik Pandya still had a lot of work to do before he emerged as a successful Mumbai Indians skipper.

“It is a tough thing to come and take over a franchise that is so storied and successful. He obviously had good captaincy skills at Gujarat, you don't lose those. I think he is growing into it but he's still got work to do,” Simon Doull said.

The critical comments of these experts come in the aftermath of the horrible start that the Hardik Pandya-led team has made in the 17th edition of the IPL.

Mumbai Indians are eighth on the table, having lost five matches while winning three in the eight games played so far in the cash-rich league and their chances of qualifying for the playoffs look extremely bleak at present.

Many experts, including former India captain Sunil Gavaskar, have blamed Hardik Pandya's captaincy for MI's poor run in the tournament.

Moreover, he has been woefully out of form – both with bat and the ball, with some reports suggesting that his World Cup spot was under immense threat because of Shivam Dube's heroics in the elite T20 competition.

He's managed to score only 151 runs at a mediocre average of 21.57 with the highest score of 39 in the eight matches he's played in the tournament so far.

In the bowling department, the Gujarat-born all-rounder has hardly bowled and when he has taken up the ball, he has gone for plenty of runs.

Hardik Pandya has picked just four wickets in eight games but what would be worrying the Mumbai Indians management is his economy rate. In the 17 overs, Hardik Pandya has bowled, he has been virtually clobbered by opposition batters, allowing them to cherry-pick him for sixes and boundaries. The result is that he has given away runs at almost 11 per over.

Earlier this month, Hardik Pandya came up with a pathetic performance with the ball against the Chennai Super Kings (CSK).

Interestingly, Hardik Pandya bowled the final over of CSK's innings to his mentor and ex-India captain MS Dhoni, who belted him for three consecutive sixes. Eventually, MS Dhoni's maximums proved to be the difference between the two sides, as CSK won the game by 20 runs.

“Probably the worst kind of bowling that I've seen for a long, long time. It almost looks like I've had this embrace with my hero. I've got a bowling kind of deliveries that he's gonna hit for sixes. One 6 is fine. The next one again a length ball when you know that this batter is looking for a length ball to hit. The third ball again, a full toss on the leg side and he's looking for it and hits it for a 6. Absolutely ordinary bowling, ordinary captaincy,” Sunil Gavaskar said on Star Sports.

Recent reports suggest that Hardik Pandya could be in danger of losing out his place in the squad for the forthcoming T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the US.

One must remember that Hardik Pandya was named as the captain of the Mumbai Indians ahead of the current edition of the IPL, replacing the much-loved Rohit Sharma from that position.

Since then, fans have been giving an extremely harsh reception to Hardik Pandya during MI's IPL fixtures across the country, with the 30-year-old cricketer facing boos and even expletives on occasions.