In the current IPL (Indian Premier League) 2024 season, the Mumbai Indians have not improved. Mumbai, in their ninth game of the season, suffered a 10-run defeat against the Delhi Capitals, marking their sixth defeat of the year.
Mumbai was assigned a daunting 258-run target, and Tilak Varma led the squad with 63 runs in 32 deliveries, making him the team’s top scorer. But his hit was insufficient to send Mumbai into victory. MI captain Hardik Pandya cited a lack of game awareness as the cause of MI’s defeat following the match. He did not identify Tilak, but his opinion was that the “left-hander” lost the game by not going after Axar Patel during the middle overs.
“I believe we missed out on a little game awareness when Axar bowled to a left-hander [Tilak].” Challenging him would have been a wiser course of action. That ultimately cost us the game, Pandya stated in the press conference following the game.
He continued, “We backed ourselves to do it, the self-belief [was there]. But if I had to pinpoint a couple overs in the middle, we could’ve taken some extra chances, given the way the games are going and how the bowlers are under pressure throughout the competition.”
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Pandya also commended Delhi Capitals opener Jake Fraser-McGurk, who put down the MI bowlers early on and scored 84 runs in just 27 deliveries to lead DC to a 257-run total. The manner in which he batted was really impressive; he made extremely deliberate shots. It was a very wise inning. If the ball wasn’t in his arc, he was attempting to chip it; he makes excellent use of the field, according to Pandya.