IPL 2022 | A collective performance with bat and ball is missing at the moment for Mumbai Indians, admits Rohit Sharma

IPL 2022 is turning out to be a nightmare for Mumbai Indians (MI) as they have lost all four matches they have played in the tournament. Their last defeat came against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by seven wickets. Batting first, MI suffered a collapse as they were reduced to 79/6 at one stage. Suryakumar Yadav came to the rescue of the team and smashed unbeaten 68 runs from 37 balls to help the team post a total of 151/6. 

"I wanted to bat as long as possible, but unfortunately I got out at the wrong time. We were hitting that partnership, we just got off to a 50-run partnership, got out at the wrong time, that is something that's hurting us a little bit. Definitely not a 150 pitch, Surya showed us if you bat sensibly, you can get more than what you got. Lot of credit to Surya at least to get us to 150, but we knew that it wasn't going to be enough,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation.

"Lot of areas actually [to address], we want some of our batters to bat as deep as possible. That is one thing we are looking at, if we get runs on the board, there's something for the bowlers to do. In the last two games, we were not able to do that. Last game [link KKR game scorecard] we got 160, this game we got 150-odd, on a pitch like that, it's not enough.”

MI tweaked their playing XI in the game against RCB and the changes were done with an aim of reinforcing the batting. Hard-hitting Punjab all-rounder Ramandeep Singh replaced Daniel Sams while Jaydev Unadkat came in place of Tymal Mills. The exclusion of Mills was surprising as he was amongst the wickets and that also compelled Kieron Pollard to take responsibility of being the fifth bowler of the team. Reflecting on the team combination, Rohit admitted that they wanted to strengthen their batting.