IPL 2022: Mahela Jayawardene Points Out Why Mumbai Indians Are Struggling

Mumbai Indians-the mighty Mumbai Indians-are struggling big time in IPL 2022, as they haven’t been able to register even a single win in their first three matches of the season. Their head coach Mahela Jayawardene believe that the team is lacking the ruthlessness, which they are known for.

After a demoralising defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Jayawardene addressed a virtual press conference and said that Mumbai Indians haven’t been able to close games even from strong positions and he blamed lack of ruthlessness as one of the key reasons for MI’s poor show in their first three matches of IPL 2022.

“We were in the game pretty much all the way but then in the last few games we have not been ruthless enough to close games off,” Jayawardene said at the virtual press conference.

“It’s always tough when you have a start like this but we need to look at the positives. We are playing some good cricket but it’s just that we are not closing games off. All three games we were in it but we were not able to finish it off.

Mahela Jayawardene also said that Mumbai Indians’ bowling attack hasn’t been able to control things at the backend of the innings and leaked a lot of runs under pressure. He didn’t mince his words while saying that Mumbai Indians’ execution has been poor and they need to lift their game up before the next match.

“So, these are concerns, especially with the ball we are not executing at the back end under pressure. Our execution has been poor so we need to make sure we brush up on that,” he added.

Talking about the outcome of the match against KKR, Mahela Jayawardene said that it was a tough wicket to bat and it wasn’t easy to score against spinners in the later stages of the innings.

“We (Mumbai Indians) knew that they have a strategy where they bowl their spinners at the back end as well so we needed to make sure that we had guys who could take them on and Suryakumar (Yadav) was one of them but initially it was a tough wicket, there was step bounce and there was a little bit in it,” Jayawardene said.

“We got stuck a little bit and then we were behind and we needed to have that par score. So that was the plan in the 13 th over and with a couple of big overs we got to a par score in the end.”