Mumbai Indians started yet another Indian Premier League season with a defeat, this time they were hammered by Royal Challengers Bangalore as they won by seven wickets. After being asked to bat, Rohit Sharma and company were off to a horrible start as they lost three wickets in the powerplays. Later Tilak Varma played a sensational innings which helped the team reach 171/7.
However, Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis batted MI out of the game as they stitched a 148 run opening stands. Both the openers smashed fifties and took the hosts to a commanding position. Later even though Du Plessis lost his wicket, RCB cruised through and registered a dominant win.
After the defeat, MI bowling coach Shane Bond was very frustrated. He shared that he has been with the franchise for nine seasons and he has not seen them win the first match. The last time MI won their first match was back in 2012 under Harbhajan Singh’s captaincy.
“This is my ninth season and we haven’t won our opening game. So it’s getting frustrating. At the end of the day, it’s a tough competition. It’s always better to have more wins than losses. It’s a tough way to start,” he said at the press conference.
The former New Zealand bowler shared his excitement at IPL’s return to home and away format. He feels that this is how IPL should be traditionally. He also added that the youngsters in their team were a little intimidated by the occasion.
“It was great to be back out on Chinnaswamy. With that atmosphere, we are just back into the traditional IPL. I think everyone missed it. Now we’ve got a few new players. They would have found it pretty intimidating but it’s much better for the experience, “ he added.
Lastly he criticised his bowlers for giving too much width and not keeping it tight. He highlighted how MI bowlers could not get two consecutive overs of building pressure. “With Virat, you just don’t want to pitch the ball too full. He’s so good when the ball is up in his eyes and full. He got us. With Faf, we knew he would use his feet. We wanted to try and use the yorker and probably didn’t use it enough. We offered too much width at the start of our innings. We got hit to both sides of the pitch and couldn’t really create any pressure. We never strung two overs together where we felt like the game was squeezing,” he concluded.
Mumbai Indians will be keen to right the wrongs in their next game against Chennai Super Kings on April 8 at the Wankhede Stadium. Rohit and the management will have to think about plans as the likes of Arshad Khan, Jason Behrendorff and even Joffra Archer looked very ineffective on the Chinnaswamy stadium wicket.
