Jasprit Bumrah and Rohit Sharma of Mumbai Indians. (Photo Source: IPL/BCCI)
Mumbai Indians (MI) started their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 season against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Sunday, April 2. They did not get off to a decent start in the tournament, losing to RCB by eight wickets on account of their poor bowling performance. It seemed like Mumbai missed Jasprit Bumrah’s heroics as none of the bowlers could do much to fill in for him.
MI skipper Rohit Sharma admitted that over the last eight months, he had grown accustomed to playing without Bumrah. In addition, the 35-year-old asked other MI bowlers to step up in the absence of the speedster. In response to the loss, he stated that it was only the first game of the season and that there was much to look forward to.
“From the last six to eight months I am used to playing without Jasprit Bumrah. Of course, this is a different setup but someone needs to put their hand up and step up. We can’t keep dwelling on it. Injuries are not in our control, we can’t do much about it. The other guys in the setup are quite talented as well. We need to give them that support. Just the first game of the season, there’s a lot to look forward to,” Rohit said.
We couldn’t really create any pressure: MI bowling coach Bond
Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians bowling coach Shane Bond was also underwhelmed with the team’s bowling attack. He stated that the bowlers provided too much width to the RCB openers at the start of their innings. He also admitted that the bowlers failed to put much pressure on the RCB batters, which cost them the win.
“We just offered too much width at the start of our inning, so we got hit to both sides of the pitch, and as I said, we couldn’t really create any pressure. We never really strung two overs together where we felt like the game was squeezing and that was obviously a little bit to do with our bowling,” Bond said.