Irfan Pathan explained the reason behind the shortcomings of the Mumbai Indians franchise in the 2022 edition of the Indian Premier League. The five-time champions have failed to register a single victory in the competition. Playing under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma, MI have lost all four of their matches in IPL 2022 so far.
The Mumbai-based franchise opened their campaign with a close defeat against the Delhi Capitals. They then suffered defeats at the hands of the Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders. In their fourth match which happened yesterday evening in Pune, the Royal Challengers Bangalore defeated the Mumbai Indians.
Speaking on Star Sports’ show Cricket Live, former Indian cricket team all-rounder Irfan Pathan analyzed the performance of the Mumbai Indians team in the 2022 IPL season and said:
“This year, MI doesn’t have a bowler who can support Bumrah well. This is a major headache for the captain. MI’s batting still looks good as they have young Tilak Varma doing well, Suryakumar Yadav starred in his comeback game, and Ishan Kishan has been firing at the top.”
MI played with only 2 foreign players in their last match of IPL 2022
The organizers of the Indian Premier League allow the teams to pick a maximum of four overseas players in their playing XIs for the IPL matches. However, in their last IPL 2022 match, MI played with only two foreign players, namely Dewald Brevis and Kieron Pollard.
Rohit Sharma decided to bench the duo of Tymal Mills and Daniel Sams to pick Ramandeep Singh and Jaydev Unadkat in the playing XI. However, none of the two changes proved to be effective.
It will be interesting to see if the Mumbai Indians decide to change their team combination in the next game. Their next opponents are the Punjab Kings, who have destroyed the opposition bowling attacks in IPL 2022.
