CHENNAI: WHEN Mumbai Indians won their first game this season against Kolkata Knight Riders on March 29, it also stemmed a rot of 12 years – not winning their first game in the IPL. That win also gave the team hope ahead of a long season, and with the names they boast – Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya – they were dubbed favourites to win the title for the sixth time.
Cut to now, and MI have just lost their fourth consecutive game after that win. On Thursday, the five-time winners lost to a high-flying Punjab Kings side, thanks to knocks from Prabhsimran Singh (80 n.o) and skipper Shreyas Iyer (66).
The team has come under the scanner for their performances. Skipper Hardik on Thursday was lost for words. "To be very honest, I don't have much to say right now. I think we really need to go back on the drawing board and see where we are lacking. Is it individuals? Is it as a group? Is it in planning? We'll just figure it out and see what we can do next," he told the broadcaster. He credited Punjab Kings for their performance.
"I think you need to give credit to them as well. The ball started reversing, and at that same point of time, the dew didn't come. In the second inning, the dew came and it slightly got better, but having said that, they just out beat us. They bowled better, they batted better, they fielded better, definitely, and that cost us the game. We really need to see, do we need to make some difficult calls or do we need to keep continuing and hope that we'll turn things around. These are some hard questions which eventually we need to answer and yeah, ownership has to be taken," he added.
Mumbai head coach and former Sri Lanka batter Mahela Jayawardene said the team takes collective responsibility for their performances so far. “When we're not doing well, it's not an individual; it's pretty much on me, everyone who's involved in the management and all that, to see how we can be better," he said after the match.
He further added that the team were playing good cricket but other teams have simply been much better. "I know we're playing good cricket; we're not like being taken out completely, but at the same time the other teams are much better, more clinical. Obviously, their confidence is high as well when they have that kind of start, so we just need to control phases that we can control. I think the onus is not just on one individual," he said.
The coach believed a few wins in the coming matches would help them regain momentum
"As a franchise, as a team, and as management, we need to do things better to get into some rhythm and then get a few wins under our belt; that will give us that confidence. Now away matches become even more important for us to see how we can control that," said the 48-year old.
Speaking about the match against Punjab, Jayawardene said that he hoped to reach the 210-220 mark, considering the start Proteas batter Quinton de Kock provided. However, the team lost momentum at the end. "They bowled well to pull back. I was hoping that we could get to that 210-220 mark if we had a couple of big overs. Losing momentum at the back end, as well as not setting the tone in that first over, probably put us back another 20 runs. So, these are areas that we've discussed. We needed to be sharper, and execution-wise it was quite poor; we have to take that and see how we can do better," he said.
