“Felt we were 20-25 runs short, 160 would have been competitive”: Paras Mhambrey

“Felt we were 20-25 runs short, 160 would have been competitive”: Paras Mhambrey

By Mumbai Indians

It just didn’t start off well. And when you are playing catchup, it’s always a tough act getting back on top. From 41/4, to post 147 was a big positive, but it was still not par. Mumbai Indians’ Bowling Coach, Paras Mhambrey, was at the post-match press conference, and he echoed these sentiments.

“Wasn’t an easy wicket. Not a normal Eden Gardens wicket. It had spongy bounce and later on wasn’t predictable. It was a little up and down which made stroke-making difficult. Credit to them as well, they bowled well as well. When you lose four wickets in the powerplay, it is always difficult to come back,” he said.  

“There is pressure on the batters to construct. You’re going to have dot balls out there. When we were batting, I felt we were 20-25 runs short on this wicket. We should have managed 160, which would have been competitive.

“It's all about partnerships. We lost wickets regularly and it was very difficult to construct a partnership.”

Coming to Kolkata, there was talk about Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy, and dealing with that threat. Mhambrey insisted the team didn’t dwell too much into that and had kept things simple in their preparations.

“Our preparation is simple: it is to win games. The focus is winning games. We’ve got to look back and say, ‘what are things we need to learn from this game’ and take it to the next game, which allows us to win games. We can only control what we can control, and that is playing 40 overs of quality cricket and winning the game. Leave the results, position on the table and everything else.”

One game remains. At Wankhede. At home. In front of 20000 kids. It’s our very own ESA game, the one that’s extremely special for a number of reasons. Let’s make sure we send them back with a massive smile at the end of the evening! 💙