Kieron Pollard has rued the lack of partnerships at the top order as Mumbai Indians stumbled to a 20-run loss to Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 2021 encounter in Dubai.
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Mumbai Indians had a poor start in the resumption of the IPL 2021 campaign against Chennai Super Kings. They had the three-time champions on the ropes at 24/4 but they let go of the advantage. Quinton de Kock dropped Ruturaj Gaikwad on 19 and he went on to score a wonderful, unbeaten 88. Chennai Super Kings managed to score over 100 runs in the last nine overs as they reached a total in excess of 150. In the batting, Mumbai Indians missed Rohit Sharma’s influence at the top.
While Chennai Super Kings had at least one partnership of note of over 50, none of the Mumbai Indians batsmen managed to stitch a big stand. The highest was 43 between Saurabh Tiwary and Adam Milne but that was when the game was all but gone for Mumbai Indians. It was this factor that Kieron Pollard, the stand-in skipper for Mumbai Indians highlighted after the end of the match.
“We must have got a partnership. You can do a lot of things differently in hindsight. Losing by 20 runs, I think that is the difference. Gave too many with the ball at the end. Their batters tried to continue the momentum throughout, we didn’t do that. We could have learned from their mistake of losing too many wickets in the powerplay. We needed one guy to bat deep. We had a couple of soft dismissals. We can’t let that happen at this level, but we still have six games to go,” Pollard said.
With the ball, Pollard perhaps made the mistake of not bowling Jasprit Bumrah through when Chennai Super Kings were 24/4. His bowling tactics towards the middle overs allowed Chennai Super Kings to regain the initiative. The lack of deep batting in the Mumbai Indians was the mistake Chennai Super Kings avoided. This was the point MS Dhoni pointed out.
“The wicket was slightly two-paced and slow to start off with. Most of them got out to the slowness. If you come later and you want to go hard and that’s why we lost wickets. I would have tried to get into the eighth or ninth over and then take it from there. You always think you could have gone harder earlier, but with wickets down, it was a risk. There’s always a catch, one batter played till the end and the others contributed well. It’s a give and take,” Dhoni said.
However, Mumbai Indians can still stage a comeback as they have six games remaining. Their next game is against Kolkata Knight Riders, against whom they have a fantastic record. After the game against Kolkata Knight Riders, the five-time champions will take on Royal Challengers Bangalore in Abu Dhabi.
Mumbai Indians will be hoping Rohit Sharma recovers from the niggle and comes back for the game against KKR. They are currently fourth on the table while Chennai Super Kings are on top of the table. Dhoni’s team are level on points with Delhi Capitals but they have a superb net run-rate of 1.223.
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