Loose ball bearing behind Mumbai Indians’ bumpy ride

Express News Service

CHENNAI: When broadcaster Danny Morrison started a question with ‘you’ve been in this position before’ while speaking to Rohit Sharma after Mumbai’s defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders on Thursday, their third successive loss of the season, referring to the past performances, the Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma did not even let him finish. “I don’t want to be in this position all the time,” he laughed with his typical humour. 

But his frustration was evident. Although Mumbai had come back from the consecutive defeats to win the title in the 2010s, Rohit and the team management knows that this time it is different. With ten teams in the mix, the crowd in the middle of the table will be huge unlike the past, where a bunch of wins in the second half would get them through the top four. More importantly, the bigger difference is how they were able to take the games to last overs even in defeats in the past, but they have been comfortably outplayed by all three teams this season.

And as their head coach Mahela Jayawardene pointed out, Mumbai haven’t been able to execute their plans with the ball as they did in the last couple of years. “There are concerns, especially with the ball we are not executing at the back end under pressure. Our execution has been poor so we need to make sure we brush up on that,” he said.

While a part of it was expected when they went after Jofra Archer — who wasn’t going to be available this year — in the auction, the lack of support from the other end in the pace department meant that they had to use Jasprit Bumrah differently and it hasn’t helped.

In 2020 and 2021, Bumrah and Trent Boult shared 86 wickets between them with the latter operating through the powerplay, allowing Rohit to use the Indian pacer as an enforcer in the middle and death overs. One look at their bowling card this season tells a story. With Basil Thampi and Daniel Sams not making early inroads, Mumbai is forced to use at least one or two overs of Bumrah in the powerplay, leaving them searching for bowlers in the middle-overs. It meant that teams were happy to play out Bumrah without giving any wickets.

The Indian speedster has taken just three wickets in a game and gone without any in the other two. He also has operated at 8.32 RPO this season, which wasn’t the case in 2020 and 2021 (7.07). That all the other pacers concede over 9.5 RPO doesn’t help either. To compensate, they might bring in someone like Jaydev Unadkat into the mix sooner than later.

But it’s not just the pace department that has issues. Although M Ashwin has bowled well, considering being the lone spinner in the side, the absence of extra bowling options isn’t helping Rohit either. But that’s the card they’ve been dealt with and he will have to find a way to make the most of it.

One way to do that is their batting, especially the skipper, to step up and take the onus to post big totals. Rohit’s record in the last few years if compared to the other top-order batters in the league would fall short by a significant margin. Though Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma have performed so far, with no Quinton de Kock and Pandya brothers to provide cushion, Rohit will have to score consistently for them to maintain the intent through the course of the innings.

If Rohit and Mumbai don’t want to be in a position to win matches on the trot, it’s about time their captain fired with the bat and found a way to get the best out of their bowling attack.