Mumbai Indians’ play-off hopes vanished a fortnight ago, yet the caravan rolls on. Three fixtures remain, plenty of travel still to come, and a dressing-room searching for purpose. Assistant coach Paras Mhambrey insists that purpose is simple enough.
“What we can control is going out there and playing quality 40 hours of cricket,” he said before the squad left Eden Gardens on Wednesday night, their ninth defeat in 13 matches confirmed.
Structured resolve
Mhambrey walked into the post-match briefing with a straight-bat message.
“Our preparation is simple: look at winning the games. That’s what we’ve been doing,” he explained. The numbers disagree, though the sentiment is clear: keep competing even when the table says you are out.
“I know, with the way things have balanced out, a win [against KKR] would have set the cat amongst the pigeons. I know that. But we can only control what we can control. And what we can control is going out there and playing quality 40 hours of cricket and winning the game and leave the results or the positions in the table for someone else to look into.”
Fielding woes resurface
If MI’s batting has flickered and their bowling occasionally sparked, the catching has been a persistent leak. Two chances on Wednesday encapsulated the problem and—unfortunately for him—both featured Deepak Chahar.
First, in the tenth over, Rovman Powell top-edged a hook towards the square-leg boundary. Chahar and Robin Minz converged, neither called firmly, and the ball settled between them. Then, eight overs later, Tejasvi Dahiya’s scoop required a sprint from short fine. Ryan Rickelton darted out from behind the stumps, Chahar charged in from the deep, and they nearly collided. Rickelton somehow avoided both the ball and his team-mate; Chahar thudded knee-first into the turf and looked distinctly sheepish.
“No one does it on purpose. You drop catches. It just happens, part of the game,” Mhambrey said, refusing to single out the fielder. “Not something that we’re going to dwell too much on, honestly. Yes, if you look at it in hindsight and say, ‘okay, fine, that catch [Powell] at that stage would have been 15, 20 runs extra’, yeah. But I’m not going to blame anyone out here. If you look at Corbin [Bosch], he took a brilliant catch [at point, to send back Powell off AM Ghazanfar]. So you compensate it for that, right?”
By the numbers—sourced from television analysts tracking every ball—Mumbai have shelled 14 chances this season. They are comfortably mid-table in that unflattering list; Punjab’s total is worse. Even so, the timing of Wednesday’s drops fed a familiar narrative of opportunities missed.
Voices beyond the camp
On commentary, former India opener Abhinav Mukund felt the surface aided KKR’s seasoned campaigners more than Mumbai’s younger group. “‘This pitch suited someone like Pandey,’” Mukund noted, with Wasim Jaffer agreeing that the extra bounce allowed Manish Pandey to play late and pierce gaps.
Inside the MI huddle, emphasis has turned to extracting individual wins from a lost campaign. Senior player Rohit Sharma, who did not speak publicly in Kolkata, is understood to have urged the squad to “finish professionally”, an appeal echoed by bowling coach Shane Bond earlier in the week.
What’s left to gain?
Travel, team selection and perhaps a glimpse into next year’s plans. Tilak Varma’s promotion to the top order is one experiment likely to continue; the think-tank also wants extended spells for young leg-spinner AM Ghazanfar. Their brief is to compete, gather data, and remind themselves what a winning habit feels like.
There are also reputations to protect. Ishan Kishan’s strike-rate has dipped below 120, Jofra Archer has bowled only 24 overs all season, and Chahar—heroic with the new ball in past campaigns—desperately needs a clean night in the outfield.
Empathy, not blame
Mhambrey’s refusal to “throw anyone under the train”, as one local reporter put it off-mic, fits the franchise’s public posture. Mumbai regularly back misfiring players, often reaping long-term dividends. With nothing tangible on the line, that patience is easier to practise, though fans on social media appear less forgiving.
The road ahead reads: Lucknow, Chennai, Bangalore. Three matches, roughly 540 legal deliveries, or in Mhambrey’s terms, “quality 40 hours of cricket” still to be played. The season is gone, but the stopwatch continues to run.
