IPL 2022 | They have a very weak bowling side, says Mohammad Azharuddin on MI's bowlers

Mumbai Indians have lost five matches consecutively in IPL 2022 which has been their worst performance in a long time. The batters have done well in bits and pieces but their bowling has not clicked as well as it used to in the previous years. With the team getting revamped in the mega-auction, it still seems like they have not found the right balance in the playing XI. Former India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin feels that the team management has failed to address the "basic problem". 

The former Indian skipper while speaking to Crictracker said, “You can't rely on one player because cricket has always been a team game and it's not an individual sport and out of the 11 players at least 8-9 players have to play well then only you can win a match. But if only 2-3 players are performing then it becomes very difficult and you can't put pressure only on the senior players and I know they are supposed to take all the pressure but at times it gets onto them as well”.

“If you see, they have only six batters, so when Unadkat was coming at No.7 (against PBKS), the opposition knew that nobody else was behind them and they maybe shouldn't have got those runouts. Suryakumar Yadav really batted well but you can't blame him because at the end if the day when you have a good batsman playing the others have to rally around him. As it is they have a very weak bowling side, and their batting...they do have a good batting side with two young boys batting really well. But little bit of inexperience also cost them the match.”

Mohammad Azharuddin scrutinised MI's bowling which has not done well this season and said, “Their bowling is the only reason why their run rate per over has gone up because they don't have good bowlers to get wickets. In T20 if you don't keep getting wickets then it becomes difficult for the batting side to score more runs or set the target. This is the basic problem that they are having. They have a good batting line-up but what's the use of it if they are giving 14-16 runs per over”.