Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma on Saturday said that the reason behind him moving down the order was to have an Indian batter bat in the middle overs against spin to make up for the absence of Tilak Varma.
Top knocks from Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway guided Chennai Super Kings (CSK) to a six-wicket win over Mumbai Indians (MI) in their Indian Premier League (IPL) match at Chennai on Saturday.
The skipper also said that the batters had an off-day as a unit.
“Everywhere I guess (on what went wrong), we didn’t bat well enough, did not put enough runs for the bowlers to defend. We had an off-day as a batting unit. We just did what we felt was comfortable (on him going down to 3), needed an Indian batter to bat in the middle overs against spin after unfortunately losing Tilak Varma, but we lost three wickets for just 16 runs,” MI skipper said in a post-match presentation.
Rohit Sharma praised Piyush Chawla and said that other bowlers should rally around him.
“He is bowling really well (on Piyush Chawla), the other bowlers need to rally around him, that is what the team needs, everyone has to come forward and chip in contributions. There’s no such home advantage this season, everyone has won and lost at home, we need to do all the three departments of the game, we will play at home in the next two games, we will see how it goes,” Rohit said.
Put to bat first by CSK, MI was off to a horrid start as their top order was laid to waste in just three overs. Cameron Green, who was opening in this match, lost his off-stump while attempting to pull. Tushar Deshpande got his first wicket. MI was at 13/1 in 1.5 overs.
MI kept on losing wickets as after the end of the powerplay, they were 34/3.
Nehal Wadhera was the only player who stood up for MI, he scored his maiden half-century off 46 balls. He scored 64 off 51 before getting out on Pathirana. He also had a half-century partnership with Suryakumar Yadav.
MI finished their innings at 139/8 in their 20 overs, with Piyush Chawla (2*) and Jofra Archer (3*).
Pathirana was the pick of the bowlers for CSK, taking 3/15 in his four overs. Tushar Deshpande also took 2/26 in his four overs. Deepak Chahar also got 2/18 in his three overs while Ravindra Jadeja got one wicket.
CSK’s innings got off to a brilliant start, with great knocks coming from Devon Conway (44 in 42 balls), Ruturaj Gaikwad (30 in 16 balls)
CSK finished off the run-chase successfully, finishing at 140/4 in 17.4 overs, with MS Dhoni (2*) and Shivam Dube (26*) unbeaten.
Piyush Chawla (2/25) was the pick of the bowlers for MI.
Brief Scores: MI: 139/8 (Nehal Wadhera 64, Suryakumar Yadav 26, Matheesha Pathirana 3/15) lose to CSK: 140/4 in 17.4 overs (Devon Conway 44, Ruturaj Gaikwad 30, Piyush Chawla 2/25). (ANI)
