IPL 2019: Another year, another false start for Mumbai Indians
Mumbai Indians are a team whose fans turn up in huge numbers year after year hoping desperately that at least once they would start on a winning note. And year after year they go home disappointed.
They've got Rishabh Pant
Yesterday night was no different. Rishabh Pant came, he saw and he clobbered the bowlers all over the park - and nobody had any answers for what transpired. At one point you could see Rohit Sharma absolutely running out of ideas; it was as though he had given up on trying to stop him.
To be honest MI did all they could to get Pant out, but he was just too good. Jasprit Bumrah was taken to the cleaners again in the first match of the tournament, just like last year, when Dwayne Bravo tore into him. And Bumrah almost got himself injured seriously in the process
Team selection
It was a typical Wankhede pitch, with the ball coming nicely onto the bat and runs flowing all over the ground. To be fair the MI think-tank did a pretty good job selecting the 11.
Playing Mayank Markande against all the DC left-handers would have been counterproductive anyway, so the thinking was correct from Rohit and Co. There was depth in the batting with Ben Cutting in at 8.
The only thing they could have done differently was maybe getting Jayant Yadav bowling off breaks instead of the inexperienced Rasikh Salam against the big burly DC batters. But then they did not have the luxury of hindsight.
Good start, not so good a finish
MI did all things correctly to begin with. Rohit won the toss and elected to bowl given the history of teams winning while chasing here, so that was one box ticked. Mitchell McClenaghan and Rasikh started really well, got the early wickets, kept the run rate in check - all was going according to plan.
Then Colin Ingram and Shikhar Dhawan stitched together an important stand and set it up for Pant. MI couldn't have done much against Pant but they certainly let the game drift away by not trying to attack Ingram or Dhawan more. They bowled one too many loose balls, especially the Pandya brothers, and once the stage was set, there was no looking back for DC.
We now know why the final few are called the 'death overs'. Pant single-handedly (quite literally) murdered the MI bowlers; everything that touched his bat went flying out of the ground.
The chase that never was
Chasing 214, something that MI had never done in the history of the IPL, needed something special. Rohit came in, scratched around for a while, but that's how he plays. Once he gets his eye in Rohit is as good if not better than Pant.
Not today though. Rohit hit one straight up and along with the ball, MI's chances of winning fell steeply - and right into the safe hands of DC.
Quinton de Kock looked really fluent coming in on the back of some red-hot international form, and played a few strokes that instilled some hope in the fans. But he holed out pretty soon.
This was the pattern that everyone followed. They came in, hit a few, got the fans' hopes up and just when it mattered the most, threw it away.
Kieron Pollard had a good stand with Yuvraj Singh, so did Krunal Pandya, but neither lasted as long as MI would've liked. Yuvraj played a decent enough innings; he tried his best but then he was never going to win the game from that stage and nor was that his role - he's the glue holding the innings together while the likes of the Pollards, the Cuttings and the Pandyas do the big hitting.
While Hardik didn't even bother the scorers, it was all over for MI when his brother Krunal got out.
Creatures of habit
All said and done, this MI outfit has won 3 titles, and each time they lost their first match, so it's not something that's breaking news for them. There won't be any waves of panic in the dressing room just yet.
There were a lot of positives as well. Yuvraj, Pollard, De Kock and Krunal all looked in good touch, and getting a few out of the middle would give them the much needed confidence going into the tournament. Rasikh seems like a fine prospect too, and the fans would hope he gets more games and MI start winning as soon as possible.
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