This time around, the Mumbai Indians are off to a sedate start to their IPL journey as they lost 2 home games and an away fixture. However, after a morale-boosting win over the Royal Challengers Bangalore at the Wankhede Stadium, the defending champions seem to be back to their best and on striking form, they remain the side to beat.
A common aspect between Mumbai’s both victories in this IPL has been Rohit Sharma’s spectacular outings right at the top of the order. The Mumbai Indians skipper had demoted himself to the middle order in order to accommodate Martin Guptill at the top. However, Sharma was once again at his desired opening spot, and flawlessly helped his side scale down a competitive score put up by the Royal Challengers.
Post the game, Sharma dismissed all speculations surrounding his future batting position. He clearly stated that he would continue opening in the games to follow. “I will bat at the top of the order. At the end of the day, everything boils down to the balance of the squad. Unfortunately, for us last game we missed Pollard because he had food poisoning and we had to get someone in. We’ve seen what Martin Guptill has done over the years and currently being in such a great form, we wanted to get him in the squad and see what he can do. Unfortunately, the tournament is such that we can play only four overseas players,” said Sharma.
The right-hander also spoke about his team’s strategy of using its overseas resources and said, “Mumbai Indians has always had this theory of playing two overseas seamers and two foreign batters.” “As far as our batting is concerned it looks more settled with Rayudu batting at three and myself batting at the top of the order. And we wanted Pollard to get back into form as quickly as possible and today was the perfect day for him.”
Rohit said that entering into the second half of the tournament, it was imperative for the Mumbai Indians to improve as a side. “When you go into the second half of the tournament, it becomes a very crucial period of the tournament where you have to win every game and you can’t change much. It’s better that you do it at the start of the season,” said Rohit.