IPL 2021: What Went Wrong for Mumbai Indians against RCB

RCB registered a nail biting 2 wickets victory over the Mumbai Indians in the first match of the double-header at the M.A Chidambaram Stadium Chennai. The skipper of Royal Challengers Bangalore, Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bowl first in order to give his bowling unit a chance to stop the mighty Mumbai Indians from scoring big runs on the board.

The batting unit of the Mumbai Indians has failed to live up to the expectations. Where the top order failed to score runs. Chris Lynn was the man who crossed 30+ Runs for the MI on the board and went on to finish his innings on 49 which ensured a respectable total of 159 in first innings. RCB Medium Pacer Harshal Patel who’s first over was absolutely thrashed away for 15 runs made a comeback and took 5 wickets in the end, This made him the first man to take a five Wicket haul against MI.

In reply, the Royal Challengers Bangalore chased down the target in the last ball of the innings, courtesy a blistering knock of 48(27) by Mr.360° Ab De Villiers the Hero of the match. The Trio of Maxwell-Kohli-De Villiers didn’t failed to live up on the expectations.

But take a look at mistakes committed by Rohit and his men in this contest:

1. Poor Batting Performance

They say well begun is half done. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with the Mumbai Indians. Mumbai got off to a poor start with the bat as the skipper Rohit Sharma was trapped in a runout. In the Powerplay overs The MI batting started collapsing and the reason why no other batsman excluding Chris Lynn, Ishan Kishan & Suryakumar Yadav was able to even cross the 20 runs mark the reason why RCB restricted them to the 159 Score.

2. Poor Death Over
MI does have an expertise in bowling in the death overs but it failed in front of trio De-Villiers-Kohli-Maxwell. However, the bowlers somewhere tried to take the team by the end of the match, but it looked like the target was less for the bowlers to defend.

3. Absence of Quinton D’Cock
The unavailability of the Keeper Batsman left the team in the miserable condition, as there was no other pinch hitter available in the team other than Chris Lynn.

4. Hardik Pandya Struggle with the Bat

Hardik came into bat in the & got himself going right away with 2 quality fours. However, thereafter he struggled to connect the ball properly and could only manage 13 of 10 balls.This led to Mumbai’s score being restricted to 159.