'It was a pretty good shot going straight to the fielder': MI head coach addresses Suryakumar Yadav's slump in form

Mumbai Indians (MI) suffered their seventh defeat of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026. Their Indian core has not fired in unison or delivered with extraordinary individual performances barring Tilak Varma’s century, which has led to them winning only two games in the season so far. India’s T20 World Cup 2026-winning skipper Suryakumar Yadav has been struggling as well. Suryakumar has scored just one half-century in the season and his lack of contributions haven’t helped MI’s cause. After the loss to Chennai Super Kings (CSK), MI head coach Mahela Jayawardene addressed concerns around Suryakumar’s form.

Against CSK, Suryakumar got a good start but he fell to debutant Ramakrishna Ghosh getting caught at sweeper cover by Dewald Brevis. Jayawardene said that Suryakumar was close to getting a good score but a good shot off his bat went straight to the fielder, leading to his dismissal.

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“I think another couple of overs he could have been off for a really good score, I think sometimes when things are not going your way, it doesn’t fall in place, I think it was a pretty good shot going straight to the fielder. It’s one of those things, I played enough cricket to understand that. For us it’s about rather than just these one or two occasions, we just collectively have to figure out what we need to do, there’s a lot of phases during the tournament where a lot of things we could have done better, it’s not just one, so I think that’s how we need to look at it,” Jayawardene said in the post-match press conference.

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Jayawardene said that Suryakumar is disappointed with himself and needs to work harder to get back in form. However, his dismissals have been on shots which have got him heaps of runs in the past.

“I think he’s definitely up for it, I think he’s in a good space, it’s just that it hasn’t worked, the amount of times he’s got caught on the boundary this season, some of those shots are his shots, like even in the last game or the one before that, the flick where he got caught, so it’s just a matter of time, but I think he himself is disappointed, but just have to keep on working harder,” the former Sri Lanka captain added.

CSK beat MI by 8 wickets

Against CSK, Suryakumar scored 21 runs from 12 deliveries, including three fours and a six. When he departed, MI were 99/3 after 10.4 overs. MI could not cash in on the platform set by the top order. MI managed to post 159/7 as Tilak Varma and Hardik Pandya struggled to find boundaries. They lost the match by eight wickets.

Suryakumar’s numbers in IPL 2026

So far, Suryakumar has managed to score 183 runs from nine innings at an average of 20.33 and strike rate of 140.98. His only half-century of the season came against Delhi Capitals (DC) in a losing cause.

The last time Suryakumar had his IPL average in 20s in a season was in 2021. He had scored 317 runs from 14 innings at an average of 22.64. In the previous season, he was one of the contenders for the orange cap, scoring 717 runs at an average of 65.18.