Ishan Kishan played in his first high-profile tournament after a long absence when he took the field for his IPL franchise Mumbai Indians against Gujarat Titans on Sunday night in Ahmedabad.  The wicketkeeper-batter registered a four-ball duck in an unremarkable return as MI lost the contest by six runs.

After representing India during a T20I series against Australia at home, Ishan didn’t feature in a single competitive game before making his competitive return during the DY Patil T20 Cup in February.

During his time away from the field, Ishan was training at a private facility and skipped domestic cricket leading to speculations over his absence.

It was during this time that BCCI reportedly sent a letter to players advising them to play domestic cricket when not representing India. Ishan would eventually not feature in BCCI’s list of centrally contracted players.

MI batting coach Kieron Pollard defended the youngster after failing to score in MI’s IPL 2024 opener at the Narendra Modi Stadium.

“Playing international sports is really tough. It’s not very easy as people will think. Yes, he (Ishan) didn’t score tonight and we can look at all sort of different things. But it’s (IPL) a long tournament. He’s an experienced guy within our setup. And we expect big things from Ishan,” Pollard told reports during a post-match interaction.

“He’s in a good space. He has been practicing well. And he has been doing fairly decently. So hopefully within the next couple of games, you can see a great performance from him. And then all of you guys will continue to laud his praise when he does that,” he added.