Ben Cutting, the right-hand Mumbai Indians big-hitter, has come out and stated his belief that the target MI were up against yesterday against the Delhi Daredevils was achievable and that he rues not being able to take MI over the finishing line.
Chasing a target of 174, Mumbai Indians despite knocks of substance at the top from Evin Lewis and at the end from Cutting himself, lost the game by 11 runs and got eliminated from the Indian Premier League season.
Cutting talked about the game and his performance after the match. He said, “I think the target was more or less achievable,”
“We have seen a variety of scores on this ground during this IPL from 200 to Chennai struggling to get 130-140 the other night. But the way that we went about our work at the start with the bat was perfect. We just sort of lost our way through the middle overs as it has tended to happen this IPL. But that score was pretty close to par, maybe five runs too many.”
Cutting talked about the young Mayank Markande as well, the youngster stitched together a partnership of 35 with his senior partner but in the process took some balls while doing his secondary skill, at the end of the innings. It perhaps cost Ben Cutting more balls, that he could've faced and made an impact.
Cutting doesn't agree to this, he said, “No, none of that comes on the back of Mayank at all. He is a young bloke, it shouldn’t be up to batsmen 9, 10 and 11 to score runs on that sort of a wicket when it’s hard to start at the best of times for the top six, let alone the bottom three or four. Again, as it has been a similar problem with other games this year, we lost 4 for 30 through the middle. And even though we got close, that dragged us down in the end.”
Talking about the varying nature of surfaces in this year's tournament. Cutting said, “I would love to see pitches favouring bowlers more. I would love to see two bouncers coming over. But IPL as a whole has been good, it’s been the fresh auctions, I think. We see how the points table has come down to today’s game to decide the final four, that’s what you want from a tournament like this.”
