Mahela Jayawardene believes his team must be ruthless in the finishing of games.
The Mumbai Indians have had a rough start to the season, losing three games in a row, and head coach Mahela Jayawardene believes the five-time IPL champions must adopt a ruthless approach to finish games. MI were defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders by five wickets on Wednesday night, their third consecutive defeat of the season. The team led by Rohit Sharma had lost its first two games to the Delhi Capitals and the Rajasthan Royals. “We were pretty much in the game the whole time, but in the last few games, we haven’t been ruthless enough to close games off,” Jayawardene said during the virtual press conference.
“It’s always difficult when you have a start like this, but we need to look at the positives. We’re playing some good cricket, it’s just that we’re not finishing games off. We were in all three games, but we couldn’t finish them off.”
“So these are concerns, particularly with the ball, which we aren’t executing at the back end under pressure. Our execution has been subpar, so we need to work on that “He continued.
Australia’s Pat Cummins, regarded as one of the world’s best in modern cricket, smashed a record-equaling fastest fifty — 15-ball unbeaten 56 — to power KKR to a five-wicket win over MI.
Mahela Jayawardene felt the MI bowlers made a mistake in their strategy when bowling to Cummins.
“We could have probably held on to the hard lengths against Cummins instead of bowling those extra change ups. Pat can easily hit a few slog sweeps because the short boundaries are on the leg side “He stated.
The Sri Lankan, on the other hand, praised his middle-order for bringing the team back to par after a poor first ten overs.
“We knew they had a strategy where they bowled their spinners at the back end as well, so we needed to make sure that we had guys who could take them on, and Suryakumar (Yadav) was one of them,” Jayawardene said.
“It’s a long tournament, (losing) three games is difficult, but we need to win and get into that good habit. We just need to make sure we’re in it by the halfway point of the season “According to Jayawardene.
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