Mumbai: Some of India’s best performers from the T20 World Cup flopped in the Indian Premier League. Three of the leading stars belonged to Mumbai Indians, which brought the side down and resulted in their failed campaign.
Skipper Hardik Pandya and pace ace Jasprit Bumrah were hampered by injuries and niggles.
India T20 skipper Suryakumar Yadav ran out of runs as well as form. “It’s a culmination of a bit of (loss of) confidence,” MI head coach Mahela Jayawardene told reporters. “He’s a gifted player, the way he plays shots and takes on the bowlers. Sometimes when you do that and it doesn’t come off and then the next game, the next game, game plan-wise, he’s trying to change a few things. But that also did not work for him.
“Last year was a phenomenal season of 700 runs. So, this is what cricket is. We’ve all played the game at that level in different formats, sometimes it happens. All of a sudden you have a bit of a (bad) patch and you’re trying to figure out how to get out of it.”
With only 210 runs in 12 matches, whether Surya has the legs for another World Cup cycle is open to debate. He will look to tower over those doubts in MI’s final league match against Rajasthan Royals on Sunday.
Bumrah’s lean season
After the outstanding T20 World Cup he had, Bumrah’s lean season caught everyone by surprise. Never before, since his rookie years in IPL, has the lead pacer found taking wickets as difficult as this year. Bumrah’s meagre haul of four wickets in 13 matches have come at a SR of 73.5. Even his ER (8.37) is on the higher side compared to his standards. Jayawardene revealed it may have had something to do with a minor injury.
“Coming back from the World Cup, he had a slight niggle which he played with through the World Cup. The first 4-5 games it was a gradual build-up for him to get over that niggle. You could see the pace dropped because of that. Now, he’s back to his pace. The last 4-5 games, he’s been good. But when you’re going through something like that, you do lose a little bit of sharpness of execution and all that because you’re fighting something else.”
Bumrah being frontloaded in the Powerplay may have been a tactic to help him get back to his wicket-taking best over constantly being tasked with the most difficult overs across phases.
“It was a good conversation,” Jayawardene spoke about helping Bumrah through the lean phase. “It was a collective conversation with his training staff. Where do we push him and how do we…there was workload management as well. How much he could bowl in the nets on preparation. Initially, we tried to tactically bowl him in situations so that he is not under too much pressure.
“But being the lead bowler, he was always under pressure. Like bowling at the death. But we used him in different ways this season to give him a bit more freedom. He comes back, smiles and says, ‘Coach, it didn’t work. Let’s try something different.’ He had a few issues with his run-up as well.
Purely because of the niggle he had. Whenever we had long breaks, he was working on that. So, I can’t take anything away from his work ethic. It’s just that it didn’t happen on the field. We all learn from these kinds of seasons.”