Rohit Sharma led Mumbai Indians continued their disappointing run in the ongoing 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League as they suffered another defeat and this time at the hands of arch-rivals Chennai Super Kings.
As the game started, CSK captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and invited the MI to bat in Chennai. Surprisingly, MI made a batting-order shuffle with Cameron Green walking out to open the innings with Ishan Kishan. This was for the first time in 62 innings over five years that Rohit has not opened for Mumbai Indians.
However, Rohit Sharma‘s move didn’t reap rewards and backfired badly. Cameron Green departed in the second over itself on a paltry score of 6 (4b, 4×1). On the other hand, Ishan Kishan survived just three other balls before he also walked back to the pavilion. Rohit walked out to bat at number and was dismissed for a duck off a ball from Deepak Chahar.
Rohit has been struggling to score runs in the ongoing season, having scored only 184 in his previous nine innings. On Saturday, he failed to add another run to the tally, as he got out on a second-straight duck.
Rohit Sharma Explained Why He Demoted Himself In Batting Order
MI captain’s call to go down in the batting order disappointed many. After the match, Rohit revealed the reason for the same in the post-match presentation ceremony. Rohit said:
“We did what was comfortable for us. We lost Tilak Varma, we needed Indian batters to bat in the middle-overs, and tackle the spinners. That didn’t happen for us in the Powerplay, and it’s tough to come back from those situations. We didn’t bat well enough to get enough runs on the board,”
CSK got 3 wickets of Mumbai Indians in the powerplay. Nehal Wadhera (64) and his half-century partnerships with Suryakumar Yadav (26) helped to bring the much-needed momentum for MI. Later Tristan Stubbs played a cameo of 20 runs and helped Mumbai Indians post a total of 139 runs.
Eventually, Chennai Super Kings won the match by 6 wickets. With this win, CSK has moved to second spot in the table with 13 points; Mumbai Indians, me
