Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma had his worst-ever IPL season with the bat as he managed only 268 runs at an average of 19.14 and a lowly strike rate of 120.17 with a best of 48.
This was also the first time Sharma couldn’t notch up a single fifty in the entire season; this was also the first time in the IPL that a batsman failed to reach a single half-century while opening in all the league matches.
Rohit Sharma expressed disappointment with his own form. However, the right-hander also felt that he is “only a minor adjustment” away from getting his batting sorted out. Sharma reckoned he will work on it “whenever there is some time off” – time off he could get in the upcoming weeks if he’s rested from the 5-T20I series against South Africa.
“A lot of things that I wanted to do didn’t happen. But this has happened with me earlier as well, so it’s not something I am going through for the first time,” Rohit said in the post-match press conference.
“I know cricket doesn’t end here; there is a lot of cricket ahead. So I need to take care of the mental aspect and think about how I can return to form and perform. It’s only a minor adjustment and I will try to work on that whenever there is some time off.”
Sharma’s failures at the top were reflected in MI’s season: they lost their first 8 matches in a row and were the first team to be eliminated from the playoff race, and even 4 wins in the last 6 matches couldn’t save them from their first-ever bottom place finish.
Rohit Sharma rued his team’s failure to execute their plans properly.
“It was a bit disappointing season for us as we couldn’t execute our plans at the start of the tournament. And we know that in tournaments like the IPL, you have to build that momentum.
“Initially, when we kept losing games one after another, that was a difficult time. For us, what was important was to make sure that whatever we had planned, we came out and tried those things. It didn’t happen exactly the way we wanted to,” the MI skipper explained.
