Mumbai Indian (MI) batting coach Kieron Pollard has backed left-handed opener Ishan Kishan to get big scores in coming matches for the side in the ongoing IPL 2024 season.
Kishan failed with the bat in MI’s campaign opener against Gujarat Titans on Sunday (March 24). He was dismissed for a four-ball duck by Azmatullah Omarzai at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
The wicketkeeper-batter hogged the headlines last month for not being included in the BCCI central contracts list for the 2023-24 season. He lost the annual contracts after failing to adhere to the board's mandate of playing domestic cricket when not on national duty.
Notably, Ishan Kishan had withdrawn from the Test series in South Africa last December, citing personal reasons. Since then, he has not been picked in any of the Indian squads.
Despite repeated reminders from head coach Rahul Dravid and BCCI secretary Jay Shah, Kishan didn't make himself available for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy 2023-24. It was only in the last week of February that the southpaw returned to competitive action via the DY Patil T20 Cup.
Pollard refrained from commenting on the controversy regarding Kishan's ouster from the Indian team.
“I don’t understand the controversial circumstances. You have stated clearly as to why he wasn’t playing so I guess we need to take that into consideration. Everything as a player and individual as well, playing international sports is very very tough, it’s not very easy as people would think,” Pollard said in the post-match press conference.
“For him, again, he did not score tonight so, we can look at all sorts of different things, but I said it’s a long tournament, he is an experienced guy within our setup and we expect big things from Ishan, he is in a good space, he has been practicing well and has been doing fairly decently, so hopefully within the next couple of games, you can see great performances from him and all of you will continue to laud his brains when he does that,” he added.
Coming to the match, Mumbai Indians suffered a narrow 6-run defeat in their IPL 2024 opener against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad.
Chasing 169 to win, the five-time champions were cruising when Rohit Sharma (43) and Dewald Brevis (46) were at the crease. However, their dismissals in quick succession triggered a collapse and MI’s innings was restricted to 162/9 in 20 overs.
Mumbai Indians will next face Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad on Wednesday (March 27).
