[Sports] Rohit Sharma gutted after Mumbai Indians fail to 'hold their nerves' vs Punjab

[Ga[M]er]

Rohit Sharma was a dejected captain after Mumbai Indians lost their fifth successive match of IPL 2022. Chasing 199, MI were cruising along but fell agonisingly short as Punjab Kings won a thriller by 12 runs after Odean Smith redeemed himself to pick 3 wickets in the final over.

After the heartbreaking defeat at Pune's MCA Stadium, Mumbai Indians became the first team to lose the first five matches of an IPL season twice.

Rohit Sharma was gutted with the two run-outs which derailed the MI chase. At the end of the 11th over, the 5-time champions had reached 116 for 3 thanks to a 25-ball 49 from Dewald Brevis. Tilak Varma had also done his bit to keep MI in the hunt with a 20-ball 36 while Suryakumar Yadav smashed a quick 43 to keep PBKS on their toes. However, Suryakumar was involved in mix-ups with Tilak Varma and Kieron Pollard before losing his own wicket in the 19th over.
Rohit said he could not pick any faults in a match which he thought they should have won but regretted the fact that his team could not hold their nerves after coming so close.

"There's hardly anything to find out from that game. I thought we played the game pretty well, came pretty close towards the back end of our batting innings," Rohit told the host broadcasters at the post-match presentation.
"It's just that a couple of crucial runouts there was not needed, but that happens. At one stage we were cruising through and keeping up with the run rate as well, but in the end we couldn't hold our nerves. Credit to Kings with the way they bowled at the back end."'
'NOTHING WORKING'
Mumbai Indians sprang a surprise by sending Tilak Varma ahead of the more experienced Suryakumar Yadav at a crucial juncture of the chase but Rohit Sharma defended the move.

"If you're not winning games, you've got to try to find a way you can succeed as a team as a batting group. So we're trying to find different ideas, different thought processes. It doesn't seem to be working at the moment but I don't want to take anything away from the guys. We fought pretty well.

"We batted brilliantly, but they held their nerves pretty good, the Kings, and they won the game. We've been not playing good cricket for a while and that's why we've been on the losing side, simple as that. The Kings batted pretty well up front and put pressure on our bowlers, got a 90-100 run partnership to begin with.

But I thought 190-plus was chaseable on that pitch because that pitch was really good to bat on as you saw when we were batting as well. We just have to go back and see what we do as a team."

Mumbai Indians next take on Lucknow Super Giants at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday.
https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/ipl-2022/story/mi-vs-pbks-rohit-sharma-reaction-mumbai-5th-straight-loss-1937187-2022-04-14