MI suffered their fifth consecutive loss of IPL 15.
Mumbai Indians (MI) skipper Rohit Sharma on Wednesday (13th April) talked about the loss side suffered against Punjab Kings (PBKS) in Match 23 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 in Pune. He admitted that they are not playing good cricket, which is the main reason behind their poor campaign.
MI suffered their fifth consecutive loss of the IPL 15 as they were thumped by PBKS by 12 runs. Bowling first, after winning the toss, the Rohit-led side had a poor outing with the ball as first openers Mayank Agarwal (52) and Shikhar Dhawan (70) scored 97 runs for the opening partnership. And then cameos by Jitesh Sharma (30*) and Shahrukh Khan (15) in the end helped the Punjab-based franchise post a total of 198 runs on the board.
Chasing the target, skipper Rohit Sharma came out all guns blazing as he scored 28 runs in just 17 balls, also completing his 10,000 runs in T20 cricket, but yet again fell after a good start. Ishan Kishan (3) too perished soon as MI found themselves tumbling at 32/2. However, after that, it was Dewald Brevis' show as he smacked 49 runs, out of which he scored 28 runs in Rahul Chahar’s over.
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Brevis was complimented well by Tilak Varma, who scored 36 runs. But a mix-up between him and Suryakumar Yadav saw the southpaw back in the hut. If this was not enough, Kieron Pollard too was run out for 10 runs as MI were left tottering at 152/5.
Suryakumar (43) tried his best but in the end, the pressure got better of him as he perished in the penultimate over bowled by Kagiso Rabada. Odean Smith then easily defended the 22 runs required in the last over to help his side register their third win of the season.
Speaking at the post-match presentation, Rohit Sharma termed run outs of Tilak Varma and Kieron Pollard as crucial turning point in their chase. He said that despite them cruising in the middle phase, PBKS bowled well at the death.
“There’s hardly anything to find out from that game. I thought we played the game pretty well, and came pretty close towards the back end of our batting innings. It’s just that a couple of crucial runouts there was not needed, but that happens. At one stage we were cruising through and keeping up with the run rate as well, but in the end we couldn’t hold our nerves. Credit to Kings with the way they bowled at the back end,” Rohit Sharma said.
Talking about the change in the batting order, Rohit said that they are trying different things to succeed. He lauded his side for the fight they showed and credited PBKS for tackling the pressure well in the end.
“If you’re not winning games, you’ve got to try to find a way you can succeed as a team as a batting group. So we’re trying to find different ideas, and different thought processes. It doesn’t seem to be working at the moment but I don’t want to take anything away from the guys. We fought pretty well. We batted brilliantly, but they held their nerves pretty good, the Kings, and they won the game,” he said.
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Rohit admitted that his side is not playing good cricket and they need to go back and see what they need to do as a team. He talked about the key points where his side fell back in the game.
“We’ve been not playing good cricket for a while and that’s why we’ve been on the losing side, simple as that. The Kings batted pretty well upfront and put pressure on our bowlers, got a 90-100 run partnership to begin with.
"But I thought 190+ was chaseable on that pitch because that pitch was really good to bat on as you saw when we were batting as well. We just have to go back and see what we do as a team,” he said.
MI will next face Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) on Saturday (16th April) at Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai.
(ANI inputs)