Australian veteran batter Steve Smith questioned Hardik Pandya’s captaincy after Mumbai Indians suffered a 31-run loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, Hyderabad on Wednesday.

SRH posted the highest total in the IPL history, scoring a gargantuan total of 277 runs after Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, and Heinrich Klaasen scored fine half-centuries. However, Pandya’s captaincy came under the scanner as he held back Jasprit Bumrah.

Bumrah was given the fourth over by Pandya and surprisingly he was not re-introduced into the attack when Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma were going all guns blazing. Head and Sharma added a quickfire stand of 68 runs off just 22 balls as they took MI bowlers to the cleaners.

Bumrah, on the other hand, conceded 36 runs in his quota of four overs and went wicketless. The gun fast bowler was given his second spell in the 13th over but the damage was already done by then.

“I think they missed a trick in bringing Bumrah back in the 13th over. When the ball’s going around like that, you’ve just got to bring your best bowler back earlier than you would’ve liked. It’s just about adapting on the go. I would’ve bowled Bumrah out by the 15-16th over to try to get some wickets,” said Smith on Star Sports.

Smith added that Bumrah could have provided a breakthrough in the middle overs, which would have helped MI keep the scoring rate in check.

“Once you get some wickets, you slow the run-rate down anyway. If these guys are batting at the end, it doesn’t matter who is bowling. We saw that in the last two overs where he still got smacked. So if he came back earlier and took some risks, things could have been really different. They got 277, they could’ve been down to 250 and they might’ve chased those down. I was just perplexed that Bumrah had bowled just 1 over up until the 13th over,” Smith added.

MI will next face Rajasthan Royals at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on 1st April.