Mumbai Indians’ stand-in captain Suryakumar Yadav said that the five-time champions will need to go “back to the drawing board” following the team’s loss against the Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday. Sameer Rizvi, the 22-year-old, played a 90-run knock to help the hosts chase down the total of 163 quite easily. The right-hander made sure that Delhi didn’t pay after losing the wickets of KL Rahul, Pathum Nissanka and Nitish Rana.
Rizvi continued with his form as he took down Mitchell Santner, Corbin Bosch, and Mayank Markande, and the Mumbai Indians had no answers to stop his onslaught. He also displayed cricketing smarts as he played out Jasprit Bumrah, refraining from playing any aggressive shot against the premium pacer.
Suryakumar, India’s T20I captain, was full of praise for Rizvi, saying the batter played a crucial knock and it played a key role in the Mumbai Indians coming up short.
“See, there’ll be days like this when you try, and it won’t work, but we will go back to the drawing board, work hard and come back in the next game,” Suryakumar told the host broadcaster.
“I mean, at 7 for 2, someone coming in like that and batting the way he batted, I think a lot of credit goes to him. He never let us come into the game. We tried our best to follow all the things that they did in the bowling department, but we couldn’t come back,” he added.
SKY’s fifty
Earlier, Suryakumar hit a fifty, scoring 51 to help the Mumbai Indians post 162 runs on the board. He also shared a 50-run+ stand with Rohit Sharma. However, in the end, the total proved insufficient as the Delhi Capitals chased it down with nine balls to spare.
“I think it was a decent wicket. We expected it to be a little on the slower side, but still, from a batting point of view, we were a little short, 15-20 runs, but I don’t want to take any credit away from their bowlers, and also they batted really well in the second innings,” said Suryakumar.
“I mean, when you’re batting first, there’s nothing like thinking about the score. You just keep batting, understand the stats, what’s good, what has been good here, but we felt 180-185 was a good score. We fell short by 15-20 runs. I think Naman and I both got out at the wrong time during the 16th and 18th over; we would have at least got above par,” added the 35-year-old.
Suryakumar had stepped in as the leader for the Mumbai Indians as Hardik Pandya missed out on the fixture, as he was unwell. The five-time champions will next square off against the Rajasthan Royals on Tuesday, April 7.
