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On May 10, Mumbai Indians (MI) became the second team to be knocked out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 playoffs race. MI suffered their eighth loss of the season, a last-ball thriller against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). After the defeat, MI head coach Mahela Jayawardene turned up for the post-match press conference. Jayawardene said that he doesn’t want to use it as an excuse but their key players were either injured or unavailable, leading to forced changes and a poor season. He rues not having the core group of players available throughout the season.
"I don't think it was chopping and changing," he said when asked about not having a set team combination. "What you guys probably didn't know is that we had a lot of injuries, a lot of niggles, players getting injured, and some players were not available. So, those were mostly forced changes.
"Tactically, we would have made very few [changes] during the season. I would have loved to have our main core guys consistently being out there. But there's no excuses. I think we had a quality squad. It's just that, like I said, we had to put our hand up and say that we were not good enough overall. But the season is still on and we're still playing some good cricket. We just need to continue to do that."
MI’s long list of injured, unavailable players in IPL 2026
MI had lost the services of Rohit Sharma for several games after he suffered a hamstring injury. Hardik Pandya has missed a few games due to injury as well. Mitchell Santner got injured and was ruled out of the tournament. He was replaced by Keshav Maharaj who is yet to play a game this season. Quinton de Kock was another player who got injured. Also, Will Jacks wasn’t available for first half of the tournament.
Out of IPL 2026 playoffs, MI to spoil others’ party
MI currently sit at ninth place on the points table, just above Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) who have eight losses from 11 games as well. MI will now look to prepare for the next season, much like Delhi Capitals' (DC) Axar Patel has already declared. MI's remaining three games are against Punjab Kings (PBKS), Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) on May 14, 20 and 24 respectively. All three teams are currently in contention for a playoffs spot.
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