On Saturday, Mumbai Indians are languishing at the bottom of the league after three successive losses. Two of those matches went down to the last ball, and the other to the penultimate delivery. A couple of those games were lost by a one-wicket margin too. Mumbai are the only team to not have won a toss this season, and Rohit Sharma's bad luck has hurt them.
Teams have chosen to chase in all nine matches so far this IPL season, and won eight of them. The only unsuccessful chase was when Delhi Daredevils were set 71 to win in six overs in a rain-hit match. It is some credit to Mumbai that they have lost all the tosses and yet come so close to winning all the matches. They have the season's top run-scorer, Suryakumar Yadav, and highest wicket-taker, Mayank Markande, in the dressing room, but no wins to show for it.
Mumbai were 158 for 2 with Kishan and Rohit Sharma batting and five overs to go. Kieron Pollard and the Pandya brothers were wickets in hand. The struggle that followed in the next 21 deliveries was unexpected. Pollard was bowled first ball, Rohit and Hardik Pandya were undone by slower deliveries from Trent Boult. Krunal Pandya inside edged to the keeper and Mumbai ended on 194 for 7.
Rohit said later that Mumbai "had not capitalised on the last five overs" and "were not consistent in terms of how they wanted to take the innings through, not able to finish off games."
