Reasons for Mumbai's appallaing performance
Mumbai Indians lost their second successive match of the Champions League T20 on Tuesday to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Australia-c844. What was worse was that in both the games, the Mumbai Indians looked to be in a comfortable
position and should have gone on to win the game, and yet ended up on the losing side.
The reasons behind the losses could be many. Lack of cohesion, captaincy, fielding issues, injuries are some of them. So what exactly is wrong?
Tendulkar’s captaincy:
This is one of the biggest factors affecting the Mumbai Indians. In the two games that Sachin Tendulkar has captained the side in, it is easy to see why Tendulkar was never considered a great captain. The
field settings have been awry, the batting order has been questionable at times, the bowling changes have been woeful and the selection itself has been a suspect.
In the first match, the Mumbai sent in five frontline bowlers – Laisth Malinga, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Ali Murtuza and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ryan-McLaren-c87323. All five are bowlers, capable of bowling their quota of overs and
yet, Tendulkar decided to use nine bowlers to finish off the quota of 20 overs. McLaren bowled only one over and conceded four runs, while overs were given to the likes of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/JP-Duminy-c1742, Kieron Pollard and some of the others. The better option would probably have
been to get in an extra batsman like Dwayne Bravo, who can also bowl a bit and get the fifth bowler’s quota done through the part-timers.
It is difficult to see how why Pollard was not sent to bat up the order in the first game when it was required and why Saurabh Tiwary missed out featuring in the playing eleven.
Cohesion:
This is a factor that affects all the Indian Premier League teams; a lack of cohesion. The reason is simple. The IPL teams, unlike the rest of the sides in the competition do not play together for the rest
of the year as well. The only tournament in which the players of the team play as a team is the IPL and that means it does become difficult for the players to understand each others’ game.
As compared to that, the Lions and the South Australian sides have been together for years now. That does make the task much easier for the side to play together as a cohesive unit.
Fielding:
This is one of biggest issues for the side. It would be fair to say that the effort on the field exhibited by the Mumbai Indians was one of the worst that one would have seen at this level. The first game
saw many ground fielding errors and the fielding coach, Jonty Rhodes is said to have lambasted the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mumbai-c820 Indians fielders.
However, if the first game was bad, the second match went two notches below that. There were three simple catches dropped, one difficult one, and one run-out chance was missed apart from that. And the ground
fielding was so appalling that the opposition easily took braces even when the ball went straight to the fielder on occasions. It is a surprise that Rhodes has not yet tendered his resignation in shame. Especially given that he was the best fielder of all
times, and by a long distance at that.
Injuries:
To be fair to the Mumbai Indians, three of their bowlers are returning from injuries. Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh have not played for http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 recently due to their injuries, while Lasith Malinga has had
to ease himself into the side because of the same issue. To expect such bowlers to come good immediately is expecting a tad too much.
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