The campaign of Mumbai Indians in this edition of the IPL seems to be headed only southwards after Rohit Sharma’s side was mauled by the Sunrisers Hyderabad. For the hosts, though, there was finally some respite after facing losses in their first couple of games.
From the Sunrisers point of view, it was the complete brilliance of skipper David Warner which floored the Mumbai Indians. Chasing a small total of 143, Sunrisers never looked in any sort of trouble as Warner toyed away with the helpless Mumbai bowlers. Shikhar Dhawan’s mediocre run persisted as the Indian opener was bowled by Tim Southee.
In the post-match presentation, Rohit Sharma admitted that despite now losing three games, his side wasn’t panicking. Mumbai can now take a cue from their very own campaign in the previous IPL, where they came back out of nowhere to win the cup. “I do not want to press the panic button as it is too early. We have been in the same situation in the last couple of years,” said Rohit.
Rohit said that the team’s batting had let him down yet again. “When you have that kind of a score, you can only hope for the bowlers to come out and do the job. But you cannot always expect that from the bowlers. We have got a lot of experience in the squad. But the batsmen are not able to get a big score. We have spoken how one batsman needs to bat through and get big runs. We did not score enough runs in all the three games that we lost. The only game we won, we chased 180-plus and one of the batsmen batted through the innings,” said Rohit.
Man of the match and Sunrisers skipper David Warner praised spinner Bipul Sharma for his miserly overs and looked pleased. “Restricting them to 140 was a great thing. With two batsmen in we were looking to chase something higher than 160 but we came back to restrict them. The last two games we did not bat and bowl well. The key thing today was that the ball swung for 20 overs. Bipul’s 3 overs were fantastic,” said Warner.
“This is about me playing the game at the top of the order and helping the team as much as I can. I ask the top four to bat through so that someone is there at the end. We have got tremendous crowd support here. They always back us,” Warner added.