MI vs SRH: What Experts Said as both teams bow out of after scintillating batting display

Mumbai Indians bowed out of the Indian Premier League 2021 with a 42-run victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Friday, 8 October, in Abu Dhabi. This is the first time since 2018 that Mumbai have failed to qualify for the playoffs stages.

Coming into the game with impossible odds, Mumbai Indians led by the belligerence of Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav put on an incredible show. MI knew that they at least had things in their hand after winning the toss, and Kishan made absolutely all of it by starting piling up runs inside the powerplay. 

He scored a 16-ball 50, the fastest ever by a MI cricketer, but found his partners disperse one by one during the course of his innings. If it were not for Suryakumar Yadav’s incredible innovation, Mumbai would have lost their way in the 15th over of the game. When he walked into bat, Mumbai had lost two wickets in back to back over. SKY took his time to get in, saw through the tough phase of play and went on the attack in the 14th over. When he was dismissed in the fourth ball off the final over, he had picked the scoring rate up and had done enough damage to post 230 runs on board.

Even at that point, things seemed well. To win the match, Mumbai had to wrap SRH under 65 runs, but that kind of went sideways when the young Abhishek Sharma started attacking the seasoned MI bowlers.

Not only did SRH score 60 runs without losing a single wicket inside 5 overs, at one point, it looked like they were going to make a competition out of it.

However, it was not to be, as after Sharma’s wicket, SRH failed to build partnerships and a defiant Manish Pandey knock went in vain due to the same. Captaining SRH for the first time, Manish Pandey produced a fantastic 69 off 41 balls, his best performance this season.

Speaking after the game, Pandey admitted that this was a difficult season for Sunrisers as the team failed to turn up together in the games.

"Best surface we've played on in this tournament. We knew Mumbai would come hard at us, and they did. I thought we could have bowled a little better, our fast bowlers gave away a few extra runs and that cost us in the end. We won only three games, we had a lot of changes in the side, and they didn't work for us. We were struggling a little bit, even in the early games in Chennai. We tried to do better in the second half, but unfortunately we could not. We only had a few individual performances, but no complete team performance."

It was ironic that SRH put up their best batting performance without the services of their famed top order. The Hyderabad outfit scored 193 runs chasing 236 beating their previous best by 16 runs.

Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma talked about how they had an on and off season and how fans always expect the best from Mumbai Indians. 

"When you play for a franchise like Mumbai, you are always expected to perform. I wouldn't call it pressure. More than anything, it is the expectation. What we have created as a group stands out in the last 5-6 years. It was very tough to drop some players. But we had an on-and-off season. We had a fabulous run as a franchise. We can be very proud of what we have created. We were just getting into the momentum of winning games in Delhi, and then there was a break in between. Once we came here, there was collective failure as a group." 

He stated that he was happy to sign off with a win but was a little disappointed that they could not go through to the playoff stages.

“But very happy with the win today; we gave everything, and I am sure it was entertaining for the fans too. [To the Mumbai fans] They have been the 12th man. They have always stood by us. Little disappointed we couldn't go through. Ishan Kishan is a very talented player, just the right position to bat is crucial. He just batted the way we want Ishan to."

The viewers got a solid game to sign off the group stage of the Indian Premier League and the experts were offered several plot points to discuss.

The most obvious one was in respect to Ishan Kishan’s turnaround in the tournament and what he did in the last two games.

After his promotion to the top order, he has looked like a man possessed and has scored a couple of incredible knocks in the IPL. This only raises the expectations that India will slot him in the first XI, possibly dropping Kohli in the pecking order.

Ishan in the post match presentation talked about the same himself and revealed the details of his chat with Virat Kohli.

“I would love to open. Virat bhai said you are selected as an opener. So you have to be prepared for that.”

It caught the eye of several people that Hardik Pandya was sent at number three to up the ante. However, not only did Pandya not miserably fail to execute it, he also did not bowl a single over in the second innings.

This meant that Hardik has gone without bowling a single over in the IPL 2021 season and that raises a lot of concerns about his spot in India’s playing XI

One of the silver linings for India and Mumbai Indians has been SKY’s resurgence of form. After worrying both the fan sections for an extended period of time, the Mumbai lad put on quite some show today scoring a mammoth 82 runs in just 40 balls, his best in the IPL.

Experts also noted how SRH’s USP failed on such a good batting track as their main bowlers notched up the economy rates that is not usually associated with them.

It was just not about the bowling though. Ayaz Memon was among the fair few that talked about SRH’s dismal fielding effort on the night. They not only dropped a few silly chances, but their work rate on the rope was not at the expected quality at all.

It was an interesting bowing out for two fantastic teams of the Indian Premier League, in the final group stage game of the season. Both teams struggled this season, but looked to have overcome their biggest issue on the night - the batting prowess.

Mumbai put on an astonishing performance in the first half, but Sunrisers surprised many in the second innings by showing a competitive mentality - a mojo that seemed lost this season.

Going into the mega-auction, both teams have a lot of time in their hands to play with the combinations and it will be interesting to see how they keep and who they choose to leave out.