Eight games gone, two won, six lost, and Mumbai Indians sit ninth in a ten-team table. The numbers themselves do most of the talking, yet the larger worry is how regularly the five-time champions look like strangers to a “complete game”, to borrow Kieron Pollard’s phrase.
“It has not been as consistent as we would have hoped and, again, the results are showing. So it’s something that you can’t shy away from,” the batting coach said after Wednesday night’s six-wicket defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Mumbai had piled up 243, a total that ought to be plenty on most evenings, but still saw it chased down with eight balls unused. “You can sit and you can try to pinpoint every little aspect of it, but, again, collectively, I think we have not been good enough.”
Pollard’s point is hard to argue with. In 2022 and 2024 MI finished bottom; in 2023 and 2025 they reached the play-offs. The graph is now sloping down again and, although they are not mathematically out of the mix, form and body-language say otherwise.
Key facts first
• Record: two wins, six defeats.
• Latest match: lost to SRH despite scoring 243.
• Jasprit Bumrah: two wickets in eight games, economy 8.80.
• Hardik Pandya: 128 runs at 152.38, four wickets at 12.26 per over.
Hardik in the spotlight
“I think there’s this tendency for him to want to take the new ball and just rolling that out,” Mitchell McClenaghan noted on air, flagging the captain’s preference for opening the bowling even when conditions may suit change. The former MI quick also felt the side “didn’t use the surface as much as they should have”, especially once the ball went soft.
On ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut, Saba Karim added a batting angle. “The opposition bowlers have worked out a plan to him: very few deliveries are bowled in the slot for him,” he said. “I think the way he sets himself up is only for those deliveries that are in the slot. Anything short outside the off stump, he’s been unable to play freely. That’s number one. Number two: the pressure of leading MI, the pressure of the team not doing very well,” – a sentence left hanging but the meaning obvious enough.
Bumrah’s quiet tournament
Pollard bristled slightly when asked about Bumrah’s meagre wicket column. “We are unfortunate, you know, to always be in the public eye. So when we do bad, it’s always being highlighted. But when normal people have jobs and they send the wrong email, they have the opportunity to edit the words and all these things. We don’t have the opportunity,” he said, before backing his spearhead to rebound. “And we are all, again, going to be singing ‘Bumrah, Bumrah’, not only for Mumbai Indians, but for India. So, again, let’s cut him a little slack.”
Analysis without the jargon
Bumrah’s pace is still evident, the yorker still lands, but wickets have dried up because batters sit deep and aim square rather than straight, soaking up the stock ball and waiting for anything marginally over-pitched. The economy figure of 8.80 – best among Mumbai’s regulars – suggests his control remains; the support cast, though, concedes around 11 per over, turning tidy overs into a sticking-plaster solution rather than a match-winning spell.
With the bat, Mumbai actually score at 10.4 an over – only Kolkata and Hyderabad go faster – yet they leak runs at 11.1. In simple terms they need two more Bumrah-like overs every night, or a middle-order cameo that keeps a 240 chase out of reach.
Where next?
Five fixtures remain. Win at least four and a knock-out place is possible, even probable, given how congested mid-table usually becomes. Lose one more quickly and the final fortnight could resemble the flat campaigns of 2022 and 2024.
Pollard insists the dressing-room is “not out of it”. The numbers insist otherwise, but cricket has a habit of turning quickly – if, as Pollard says, they can finally “string a complete game of cricket together as a team”.
