Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya snapped at his team after their loss against Punjab Kings on Thursday, April 16. Pandya cut a frustrated figure in the post-match interview and did not have anything positive to say about the team.
Hardik said that he had nothing to say about his side and that he needed to go back to the drawing board to figure out what had gone wrong. Mumbai Indians batted poorly, bowled poorly and fielded poorly on Thursday, losing to Punjab by 7 wickets.
Despite Quinton de Kock’s century, Mumbai scored only 195 runs and eventually ended up surrendering the game in just 16.3 overs. Shreyas Iyer and Prabhsimran Singh batted with vigour at the Wankhede Stadium and thrashed Mumbai at their home ground on Thursday.
“To be very honest, I have nothing to say at the moment. We need to go back to the drawing board and see what we are lacking. Is it individuals? Is it as a group? Is it planning? We will sit and figure it out soon and then we will see what we can do next,” Hardik Pandya said in the post-match interview.
“…They just out-batted us. They batted, bowled and also fielded better than us and that cost us the game,” he added.
This was Punjab Kings’ fourth win this season from five games. The only match that they have not won this season is against Kolkata Knight Riders, where the match was washed out by rain at the Eden Gardens.
On the other hand, Mumbai are tottering at the second-last place in the Indian Premier League table. Asked what change the team needed, Pandya’s honest assessment was that he did not know. The captain said that he was torn between taking some tough calls or letting the combination continue, hoping that their luck will change in the tournament.
“I mean, we really need to see whether we need to take some bold calls or hope to turn things around with the same group. There are some hard questions which we need to answer and yeah, ownership has to be taken,” concluded the MI captain.
Mumbai have played five games this season and have only won against Kolkata Knight Riders in their first match of the season. Apart from the final-ball thriller against LSG, all of Mumbai’s losses have been one-sided.
