Pune: Mumbai Indians’ misery doesn’t seem to be ending soon in this season of Indian Premier League (IPL). Rohit Sharma led Mumbai Indians the most successful franchise in the tournament history and was left disappointed after another match slipped away from their hands. They were defeated by Punjab Kings by 12 runs.
A lot of things were done right by Mumbai in the run chase of 199 at the MCA Stadium in Pune on Wednesday. After losing the openers early, the duo of Dewald Brevis and Tilak Varma held the fort and gave the team a good total. However, two unfortunate run-outs set back them.
However, after their fifth straight loss of the season, Rohit said he could not pick any faults in a match that he thought they should have won but regretted the fact that his team could not hold their nerves after coming so close.
“There’s hardly anything to find out from that game. I thought we played the game pretty well, came pretty close towards the back end of our batting innings,” Rohit told the host broadcasters at the post-match presentation.
“It’s just that a couple of crucial runouts there was not needed, but that happens. At one stage we were cruising through and keeping up with the run rate as well, but in the end we couldn’t hold our nerves. Credit to Kings with the way they bowled at the back end.”‘
MI has made several changes to their batting lineup this year. They have two brilliant young batters in Dewald Brevis and Tilak Varma but they lack the depth in their batting order. But nothing seems to be working out for the five-time champions, admits the MI skipper, who completed his 10000 runs in all forms of T20.
“If you’re not winning games, you’ve got to try to find a way you can succeed as a team as a batting group. So we’re trying to find different ideas, different thought processes. It doesn’t seem to be working at the moment but I don’t want to take anything away from the guys. We fought pretty well.”
The Mumbai Indians skipper admitted that the side isn’t playing good cricket, adding that they need to go to the drawing-room and come up with a better plan.
“We batted brilliantly, but they held their nerves pretty good, the Kings, and they won the game. We’ve been not playing good cricket for a while and that’s why we’ve been on the losing side, simple as that. The Kings batted pretty well upfront and put pressure on our bowlers, got a 90-100 run partnership to begin with.” he concluded.
Mumbai Indians next take on KL Rahul led Lucknow Super Giants at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai.
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