It has not been an entirely great start to the season for Mumbai Indians. They have won just a solitary match out of the three they have played in and while their batting and bowling combinations certainly need tweaking, there is further trouble for skipper Rohit Sharma.
The captain was fined Rs 12 lakh after his team maintained a slow over-rate during their IPL match against Kings XI Punjab in Mohali. "As it was his team's first offence of the season under the IPL's Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offences, Sharma was fined Rs 12 lakh," the IPL said in a media release.
Mumbai were not sharp in the field
Mumbai Indians were not very sharp on the field against Kings XI Punjab and their gun bowlers Malinga and Bumrah could not repeat the heroics. Bowling coach Shane Bond summed up the performance - "In terms of bowling performance, not too many positives to be fair."
It was not a very fluent innings by KL Rahul, who was ugly right through the innings and Mumbai could not get rid of him early in the piece, he dug deep and eventually pressed on the accelerator towards the end as Punjab literally strolled towards a win.
"We bowled too much width, too full and KL Rahul took his time and they batted around him. We know how Chris was going to play: he would try to see off Bumrah and Malinga and then he'd go after our spinners. We tried to delay it for as long as we can," Bond explained after the match.
However, despite Rahul carrying his bat right through the innings, it was Mayank Agarwal who played the decisive innings and walked away with the man of the match award. Bond was candid in conceding that the plans against Mayank were not accurate and it could have been better.
"Mayank Agarwal played beautifully. We weren't accurate enough to him and he took the game away from us at a point where they required 10-11 runs an over required and he dragged it back to eight an over and we struggled to get back the momentum," he added.
It is a familiar position for Mumbai, a very mediocre start, plenty of questions to be asked, their middle order is not getting the job done and the bowling is hugely dependent on Bumrah. For Rohit and the management, things resolved to be sooner rather than later if they aim to qualify for the playoffs.
