'Mumbai Indians didn’t look in the race' - Sanjay Manjrekar on MI's performance against Gujarat Titans

There is a lot of criticism being directed towards Mumbai Indians (MI) for their performance against Gujarat Titans (GT) on Saturday, March 29. Former cricketer and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar shared his opinion on what went wrong for them during their chase and how the home team batted better than them.

The GT batters had put up a formidable total of 196 on the board which MI failed to chase down due to a disappointing performance with the bat. According to Manjrekar the Mumbai franchise did not look like they were in the race after the second wicket fell, bringing up the comparisons between the powerplay scores of both the sides. Manjrekar also believed that MI bowlers might have conceded 15-20 runs extra in the first innings.

“Mumbai Indians didn’t look in the race when they lost two wickets for 35. In comparison, Gujarat Titans had around 129 runs for their first two wickets. After that, it seemed like Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav were trying to build a partnership. The challenge with building a partnership in a chase of over 190 is that the required run rate starts to suffer, and that’s exactly what happened,” Manjrekar spoke on JioHotstar.

"In the end, you have to say that Gujarat Titans batted better—I thought they got maybe 15 to 20 runs over par. The dew never came in, which made Mumbai’s job even more difficult. But despite all that, two losses are quite typical for the Mumbai Indians. They still seem to be on the right track to go on and win the title,” Manjrekar added.

Manjrekar also went on to analyse the MI batters, identifying what might be affecting their performances. The former opener felt that most of the batters prefer some pace and bounce in the wicket and also mentioned that batters like Ryan Rickelton will take time to adapt to the surfaces. There was also some criticism towards Rohit, who has not looked good in the first two games.

“Rohit Sharma is clearly going through a phase. He's not the Rohit Sharma of, say, three to four years ago. He’s at a stage in his career where he has to push himself every morning—train hard and be at his best—because things are slipping away for him. He's still relying on his natural talent and instincts. Ryan Rickelton, being a South African, will take time to adjust to Indian pitches. Very few South African batters, barring AB de Villiers and Heinrich Klaasen, have truly flourished on Indian pitches, so we’ll have to give him time,” Manjrekar said.

“Apart from that, Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav, along with Robin Minz and some of the other players, form the batting line-up. However, to me, it still looks a little unconvincing. And a lot of them rely on pitches where the ball comes onto the bat nicely. There’s pace and bounce, and even in that chase where they needed 12 or 13 runs, if it had been at Wankhede Stadium, they would have likely come very close to the target,” Manjrekar concluded.