Mumbai Indians (MI) head coach Mahela Jayawardene has backed the form of out-of-form openers Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan, and said that a turnaround is possible. Mumbai suffered their seventh straight loss -- a first for a team in the Indian Premier League (IPL) -- and both the team's openers were dismissed for ducks in the first over itself.
Rohit, who earned the ignominious record of bagging the most IPL ducks at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai on Monday, has managed only 114 runs from seven innings in the 2022 IPL season. Speaking after the match, Jayawardene said, "You need to back the ability, the confidence, these are the guys who have played a lot of IPL cricket, understand what needs to be done and just need to get in, work hard, go through the process and it will turn around."
The 44-year-old head coach also reiterated that both Rohit and Kishan start their innings positively before fading out. "It has been up and down. To be honest, Ishan batted really well in the first couple of games, and then a bit of a slide. Ro (Rohit) has been hitting the ball really well, he gets good starts, 15-20 runs, looking good and then not being able to convert," he said.
Kishan was bought by Mumbai for Rs 15.25 crore at the IPL mega auction, making him the highest buy of this year’s auction. But the left-handed batter, who was also dismissed on zero against CSK, has managed only 191 runs from seven games.
"When that happens, and when you get out early, you feel that nothing is going your way. I have been a batsman (and) that is part and parcel but I will be concerned if they are not hitting the ball well or if they don’t have that confidence, but both of them have been batting well out there in the middle as well in the nets,” the former Sri Lankan batting great said.
MI's winless rut has seen the side stuck at the bottom of the points table with zero points and a net run rate of -0.892. They were close to a victory over Chennai Super Kings before MS Dhoni scored 16 in the last four balls of the match to gift his side the win.
