Four losses in five games. Four losses in a row. We’ve been there. We’ve gotten out of this. But tonight, on the back of this tough defeat against the Punjab Kings, we know it hurts.💔

Mumbai Indians’ Head Coach, Mahela Jayawardene was at the press conference post the match and spoke about how the team tried despite losing early wickets and getting on the wrong side of the conditions, and how we need to come back from here.👊

“We are finding some spark in certain areas, but in other areas we aren’t finding that. With the ball, we haven’t been able to penetrate oppositions. That’s something we have to work harder on and see how we can improve on that,” he summed up the game.

What’s slightly new is Jasprit Bumrah not being among the wickets, something we aren’t used to. But Mahela wasn’t worried. “Boom is bowling well. We are not putting pressure in the powerplay. They (oppositions) know they don’t need to take risks against Boom. We have tried a few things, which he trying as well. They are batting well. Can’t put a finger and say why he hasn’t taken wickets. But as a unit, we have lacked that penetration in different surfaces and that is where we need to work and see what we can do,” he said.

“It’s on every one of us to see how we can be better. I know we are playing good cricket. We are not like taken out completely, but other teams are much better, clinical. Their confidence is high as well when they have those kind of starts. We just need to control phases we can control. The onus is not just on one individual. As a franchise, as a team management, we need to do things better to get into some rhythm and get some wins under our belt to give us that confidence.”

Quinton de Kock’s return to the top of the order with a superb century and Naman Dhir impressing at number four with a counter-attacking fifty were some of the positives for MI to take out of this game, and something Mahela was pleased about too.

“Naman is a top-order batsman and has been doing the job for us at the backend. Whenever given the opportunity, he has done well. He was batting well through the season for us. We felt we had to make a few adjustments to see how we could get better,” he said.

The dew factor now. From being on the rough side of it while defending a sub-200 total with the opposition batters in good form was always going to be tricky. But our Head Coach wasn’t one to look for excuses. He stressed on the need for the bowlers to have capitalized the powerplay better.

“We saw the change of the wicket when the dew came in. When they bowled the wicket was tacky and was holding up. In those conditions I thought we batted brilliantly. I want to give a lot of credit to our batters who came back strongly in that situation against a strong attack. The way we put Yuzi (Yuzvendra Chahal) under pressure, tactically we played brilliantly,” he said.  

“For us, the key moment for us was to try and control the powerplay. In the six overs, we got two wickets but we gave runs. The first over, the 20 run over, did hurt us a lot. The first ten overs, before the dew really settled in, if we could have squeezed a bit more, taken a few more wickets, it could have been a different ball game. But we just couldn’t do that. They had the momentum…that’s the margins we are playing with.”

Mumbai Indians head over to Ahmedabad next for the clash against the Gujarat Titans on Monday (April 20). We were in a similar position in 2014, 2015 and 2025, and we’ve shown the world how to storm after having our backs against the wall. Time to add 2026 to the list.. 💙💪