Mumbai Indians lost their second consecutive game of IPL 2022 and have not opened their mark in the tournament and now are languishing at the 9th position in the points table.
After going down shockingly to a depleted Delhi Capitals side last week, when their bowlers failed to close out the game, this time, in their loss to Rajasthan Royals, it was Mumbai Indians batters who failed to chase down the target of 194, despite the surface remaining true to its nature.
While this is not new territory for them – Mumbai Indians are perenially slow starters in the IPL and then romp up as the tournament progresses – their bowling, apart from Jasprit Bumrah and Tymal Mills, has looked toothless as Jos Buttler on Saturday showed hammering the other bowlers during his 68-ball century while smartly playing cautiously against Bumrah.
Their batting, too, has been underwhelming in both the games, especially in the death overs where historically in the past they had been really destructive. Tim David and Daniel Sams are new to the tournament and to such level of bowling, while seasoned campaigner Kieron Pollard is yet to hit his straps and Rohit Sharma hasn’t been consistent for a while.
Ishan Kishan with twin fifties and Tilak Varma with 61 off 33 have been their bright spots in the batting department.
However, Mumbai Indians have been missing one key man in their batting order: Suryakumar Yadav, who missed the two games as he is recovering from a hairline fracture on his thumb that he had sustained during the West Indies T20I series earlier. In Suryakumar’s absence, young Anmolpreet Singh was given the number 3 duties but the youngster hasn’t been able to make a mark with scores of 8 and 5.
Harsha Bhogle took to Twitter to address this issue. He reckoned no team is missing any player more than Mumbai Indians have missed the services of Suryakumar Yadav, who had been an integral part of their success in the previous IPL cycle.
“If ever a team was missing a player, #MI is missing SKY,” Bhogle tweeted.
If ever a team was missing a player, #MI is missing SKY.
— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) April 2, 2022
The positive for MI is that they have made scores of 177 and 170 in their two games without SKY and once he’s available – which might be for their next game on Wednesday against KKR as he’s joined the team and had practised in the nets – the batting will get a massive boost.
