Mumbai Indians were knocked out of the IPL on Friday [Source: AP]
The ongoing Indian Premier League season was an up-and-down affair for the Mumbai Indians. Despite possessing an explosive-batting unit, MI lacked quality in their bowling department, which faltered several times while defending.
Jasprit Bumrah's injury and Jofra Archer's unavailability only aggravated their miseries. However, the five-time champions still reached qualifier 2 before being knocked out by defending champions Gujarat Titans.
At the post-match conference, head coach Mark Boucher spoke in detail about the impact of losing key personnel on the team. Boucher, a hard taskmaster, added that the management would have to make decisions based on the player's fitness moving ahead.
Here's what Boucher said
"You can look at Bumrah not being available, Jofra not being available, they are quality players. If you are losing out on your quality players, yes it's going to leave a hole. Not to put any blame on anyone, those things happen in sports, injuries happen in sports and you've got to deal with it."
"I thought that the guys that we brought in, they did their best in a situation where they probably weren't selected upfront. So they were brought into the competition maybe a little bit out of season for them. To lose two players like that, that was difficult but we gave our best and we weren't good enough."
Archer played just five IPL matches for MI this season before returning England midway following his elbow stress fracture relapse.
Talking about his maiden IPL season as coach, the South Africa legend stated that it had been a fantastic experience and that he enjoyed the competition, which ended in disappointment.
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