Mumbai Indians (MI) suffered their fourth consecutive defeat in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022. After the comprehensive defeat, skipper Rohit Sharma revealed why he went into the clash against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) with just two overseas players.
“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,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation ceremony.
MI went with just Dewald Brevis and Kieron Pollard as their overseas picks in the fourth game of the season. While the exclusion of Daniel Sams was expected after the Pat Cummins beating in the previous game, English pacer Tymal Mills was not included in the side as well.
Ramandeep Singh was handed his IPL debut to bolster the batting which he could not with a six-run knock. On the other hand, Jaydev Unadkat bowled well and got the wicket of RCB skipper Faf du Plessis. Unadkat also shared a crucial partnership with Suryakumar Yadav after MI suffered a batting collapse.
Rohit was critical of his own batting as well. The opener got off to a good start in the powerplay overs but failed to judge Harshal Patel’s slower ball in the seventh over and handed back an easy catch to him. He scored 26 runs off 15 deliveries in the 50-run opening partnership.
“Just got 26, 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,” the 34-year-old said.
After losing five wickets for just 12 runs in the middle overs, MI were rescued by Suryakumar Yadav’s unbeaten 68. However, the 153-run target was not enough to make a game out of as RCB chased it down in the penultimate over.
“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. We took our chances with the ball but they batted quite sensibly,” he further added.
