Players who are representing national team should get preference: Rohit

Indian captain Rohit Sharma on Thursday backed the retention of national team players in the Mumbai Indians squad for IPL 2025 while franchise skipper Hardik Pandya summed it up as "five fingers but one fist". Mumbai Indians chose to retain five Indian players as the IPL franchises submitted their list of retentions to end weeks of speculations around who were going to stay with their teams and who would be entering the auction pool. "The players who are representing the national team at the highest level should get the preference. It's a very tough one when you come into a fresh auction and you start retaining players," former MI skipper Rohit said after being retained by the five-time winners. After a disastrous last season when they finished at the bottom of the 10-team league, Rohit said MI will look to put their best foot forward in the next edition. "With Mumbai, we have always tried maintaining a core group of players. Moving forward, I just feel that we can have a good auct