The defending champions, Mumbai Indians, have only 6 points with only 4 matches remaining. Even winning all can make them reach to 14 points, which technically may not be enough to make the knock outs. Still, they are officially not yet knocked out. But a loss in their 11th match of the season, will certainly hand them over the knockout punch as confirmed eliminated team with Delhi Daredevils. They started IPL 2014 as defending champion with the tag line of the second best team of IPL after CSK, with 56 wins and 39 losses. But after 10 matches, they are at present the second worst team of 2014, and their only performing star Malinga has also left for national duty. With nothing more to lose, and poor batting and bowling record behind, can they win the remaining 4 matches!!
MI Has the Worst Record Among Defending Champions
With just 3 wins and 7th position in the Points Tally, MI still needs 3 more wins to equalize the poorest record of a defending champion.
-
2009 RR 6th with 6 wins in 14 matches
2010 DC finshed 2nd at group stage with 8 wins
2011 CSK won again
2012 CSK reached final
2013 KKR finished 7th (9 teams) with 6 wins
2014 MI on 7th with 3 wins in 10 matches, 4 matches remaining.
Records
- 16 wickets in 39.1 overs of 10 matches make Malinga just 2 wickets short of snatching the Purple Cap from the top slot fighters Bhuvneswar Kumar and Mohit Sharma.
310 runs take Rayudu to 10th position of current run scorers of IPL.
5 straight losses at start made them the only team to achive the dubious feat.
Match Results
- 1. Lost to KKR by 41 runs
2. Lost to RCB by 7 wickets
3. Lost to CSK by 7 wickets
4. Lost to DD by 6 wickets
5. Lost to SRH by 15 runs
6. Def KXIP by 5 wickets
7. Def RCB by 19 runs
8. Lost to CSK by 4 wickets
9. Def SRH by 7 wickets.
10. Lost to KKR by 6 wickets
Bowling Woes
After Malinga their second best performer is Harbhajan with 8 wickets although his economy of 6.23 in 39 overs bowled is not only the best by any MI bowler, but also better than the leader B Kumar, who has economy of 6.28. Zaheer with 6.53 in 22 overs was also economic but he is replaced and after that except Bumrah (6.71 in 21 overs) all the remaining bowlers have been expensive. In fact Pragyan Ojha, Anderson, Pollard and others have been leaking runs without grabbing wickets.
In 10 games they have bowled 2 maidens, one each by Harbhajan and Pragyan and overall grabbed 43 wickets, with 4/23 being the only instance of their bowlers taking 3 or more wickets in 2014. Such has been their poor show.
Batting Woes
Their highest score in 10 matches is 187/5 (vs RCB). They have crossed 160 runs only in 2 matches, while in 5 matches they could not touch 150 runs. Despite having multiple mentors of great stature, the team selection has confused everyone. Batsmen have failed to deliver too. Their highest scorer so far is the retained player Rayudu (310 runs in 10 innings), the only one to cross 300 runs. But his strike rate is only 120. Even the second placed dynamic captain Rohit Sharma has a strike rate of 123 only. With 266 runs he is at second position, and the only other batsman to have score some runs is third-placed Pollard with 219 runs with a strike rate of 131. Only Pollard has appeared like fighting for them in the last few matches, at least with the bat.
Overall they have only 7 50s on board, and except Pollard’s 78 all of them have taken lot of balls to come up. There has been dearth of partnerships. All the batsmen are finding difficult to quickly adjust to the changing conditions. It is hard to believe that most of these players were part of the winning squad in the last edition.
Leave a Reply