 "IPL 2024: 'Did not play good quality cricket, that cost us entire season', Hardik Pandya after MI's defeat to LSG")
Mumbai Indians (MI) skipper Hardik Pandya on Friday said that not playing quality cricket throughout the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season led to his team’s ouster from the tournament’s league stage. Hardik was named skipper of MI ahead of the 2024, and the manner in which he took over captaincy from Rohit Sharma was criticised by fans.
Hardik even received a hostile reception from fans in the initial few games of the season, with fans booing him during toss as well as during the games. MI finished rock-bottom of the 10-team IPL standings with just eight points from 14 matches.
“Quite difficult. Did not play good quality cricket, eventually costed us the whole season. It’s a professional world. Have to always come out and put our best foot forward. But yes, as a group we could not play quality cricket or smart cricket,” the all-rounder said after his team’s 18-run loss to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) on Friday.
The 30 year-old, however, felt that it was still early to point out what went wrong in MI’s season but wasn’t really happy with how the five-time champions performed throughout the league stage. “Too early to point out what went wrong. The whole season kind of went wrong. We can pass this game as another one (that went wrong),” stated Hardik.
For LSG, their season was hampered by injuries to Mayank Yadav and Mohsin Khan, two of their standout bowlers this season. Mayank took three wickets each against RCB and PBKS, whereas Mohsin was LSG’s fourth-best bowler with 10 scalps. Mayank was ruled out with a side strain whereas Mohsin suffered a head injury during the game against KKR on 6 May. Despite the win over MI, LSG won’t be able to qualify for playoffs due to their negative NRR.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Very disappointing. At the beginning of the season, I really felt we had a strong team and had most bases covered. Couple of injuries - happens to every team. We didn’t play well enough collectively. Today was a really good performance. This is the kind of game we wanted to play more. Unfortunately we didn’t do that. Really happy for them,” LSG captain KL Rahul said.
Rahul said that Mayank and Yudhvir Singh, who had replaced Mohsin as a concussion substitute, had been sent to South Africa to train with Morne Morkel. “Franchise has invested a lot of time and energy with them (Indian pacers in LSG). It’s not just two months in the year. We sent Mayank and Yudhvir to South Africa to train with Morne Morkel. Hard work for them has paid off, but franchise and the team has worked a lot with them. I’m not sure. There’s not much T20 cricket coming up now. It’s been a season where I’ve learnt a lot about my own batting and what I need to do to get back in the team,” added the veteran.
On asked if Nicholas Pooran should have batted up the order for LSG, Rahul said: “Not really, we’d have ideally wanted him to bat higher but how the teams line up is how the international players slot to absorb the pressure. Once Stoinis was at No. 3, we couldn’t have had Pooran after him to have them bat in the 8th or 9th over together,” added the 32 year-old.
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