6 Matches, 6 Losses. Mumbai Indians lost their sixth consecutive match of the IPL 2022 and remain the only side without a single victory. KL Rahul’s Lucknow Super Giants defeated Rohit Sharma’s team by 18 runs on Saturday at the Brabourne Stadium.
Barring the loss to KKR – when Pat Cummins’ blazing 14-ball fifty stunned everyone – MI have lost the other 5 matches to rather closer margins; in all of them they have made tactical errors – in the selection of the playing eleven and in the game as well – further compounded by the poor form of some of their batters.
The five-time champions continue to languish at the bottom of the points table, and are all but eliminated from the playoff race; however, they do still have a chance.
So now the question in everyone’s mind: can Mumbai Indians still make it into the playoffs?
The easier answer is that they now need to win all their remaining 8 matches. Should they manage to do so – but first they’d have to get their first win – they will then end up with 16 points – and that is expected to see them crawl into the top four going by the 2011 season, the last time the IPL had 10 teams playing 14 league matches each.
Here’s a further explanation:
During the 2011 IPL, the team that qualified for the playoffs at the fourth position had 16 points, while the one with 14 points missed the top four.
This was not the case with 8-team IPLs in the past seasons when a team with 14 points had made it into the playoffs. It’s unlikely to be the scenario this time – as, going by the 2011 points table, a team would need 16 points to finish at number 4.
So, going by this, MI now need to pull off an incredible miracle to go on an 8-match winning streak to finish in the top four. The odds are ridiculously improbable for MI to qualify from their current situation, and you wouldn’t want to bet more than a dollar on their playoff qualification.
