IPL 2018: Mumbai Indians' batting wasn't good enough, says Ben Cutting

Cutting rues the 20 more runs that Mumbai Indians couldn't put on the board.

Rohit Sharma was out for a duck against Rajasthan. (IANS)

Ben Cutting, the Mumbai Indians all-rounder, has come out and stated that MI's batting line-up failed to put enough runs on the board against Rajasthan Royals and that there happened to be the biggest reason why his team lost a crucial encounter last night. 

Batting first Mumbai put up 169 on the board, which at the Wankhede Stadium, because of the wet conditions owing to dew and flat pitch, was at least 20 runs short. RR chased down the target with Jos Buttler playing a magnificent innings of 94 from 53 balls. 

Talking about the game and the knock by Buttler which completely took the game away from his team, Ben Cutting was quoted as saying, “It’s tough. We were pretty close to our plans tonight. (He) missed a few balls with execution here and there but that happens in Twenty20 cricket. He’s in red-hot form and he’s scored over 500 runs. But his confidence is high; he’s striking the ball well.”

He further said, “I’m not going to put it down to their bowling. It’s probably back to our batting. A few times this time we’ve fallen in a heap and sort of lost quick three or four wickets in three overs for not many runs. So when you lose 2 for 20, 3 for 30, it’s tough to build up and fire again regardless of the bowling,”

“If you go back to our first 3-4 games of the season that we lost in the last over, had we won two of those four games we wouldn’t be having the same conversation. We’d be sitting comfortably at 14-16 points.”

The other performance that decisively turned the game into Rajasthan's corner was from Jofra Archer, who picked up 2 wickets in four overs giving away just 16 runs. His teammate Dhawal Kulkarni showered praise on him by saying, “I think he’s been bowling consistently well. No doubt about that. But today it was special. The wicket assisted him really well. The way he was getting that bounce, it was really special. I just wished that he got a hat-trick. It would have been better for us and for him,” 

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 14 May, 2018

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