IPL 2022 | A collective performance with bat and ball is missing at the moment for Mumbai Indians, admits Rohit Sharma
Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma has admitted that the team is not able to put up a collective performance so far in the tournament after their fourth successive defeat against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Rohit added that the team wants batters to bat as deep as possible to score a decent total.
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.
The innings by youngster Anuj Rawat for RCB made the chase very easy. Rawat scored 66 runs from 47 balls playing match-defining innings. The team chased the target in 18.3 overs and seven wickets to spare.
Reflecting on the result, MI captain Rohit Sharma opined that the team hasn’t been able to put up a collective performance with bat and ball. He also said that the team needs some of their batters to bat as deep as possible.
"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.
“I have always spoken of collective performance both from bat and ball, that seems to be missing at the moment. Once that comes through, I think we should be good."
"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.
"It was just the combination that we felt would be ideal on certain pitches and certain opposition. We wanted to strengthen our batting, unfortunately we had few overseas guys who were unavailable, so we wanted to get the best from whatever we had," he explained.