Why Mumbai Indians have made such a poor start in IPL 9

'The challenge is that we start the next game well and are able to play 40 overs of good cricket. So far, we have been able to play 30 overs of good cricket and that's not enough.'

Mumbai Indians coach Ricky Ponting lists the reasons for his team's poor start in IPL 9 and how they plan to make a comeback.
Harish Kotian/Rediff.com listens in.

Mumbai Indians have made it a habit of getting off to slow starts, but as was witnessed in the last two seasons, have staged great escapes.

Last year, they started with four straight losses before scripting a fairytale comeback to win their second Indian Premier League title.

The year before, in 2014, it was even worse as the Mumbai Indians lost their first five matches, and were winless on the United Arab Emirates leg before staging another magical comeback, to make it to the play-offs where they were beaten by the Chennai Super Kings in the Eliminator match.

The trend continues for Mumbai fans as the defending champions have once again got off to a horror start, winning just one of their first four games.

Many wonder if the team will make it past the league stages this year.

Australian cricket legend Ricky Ponting, the MI head coach, expressed his displeasure at his team's poor showing, saying they have not performed at their best yet and have squandered good opportunities to win games.

"It seems like so far in the games that we have lost, we have had opportunities to win those games as well. We have had moments where we have been fighting our way back in the games and then just had another bad over or a couple of bad overs or a dropped catch that really deflated the momentum that we have been starting to create," Ponting said.

"So, the challenge is that we start the next game well and we are able to play 40 overs of good cricket. So far, we have been able to play 30 overs of good cricket and that's not enough."

"So, we have to be consistently better for longer in tomorrow's game (against the Royal Challengers Bangalore) if we want to win it," he said in Mumbai on Tuesday, April 19.

The Mumbai Indians batting has been a major worry for the team management with the side struggling to put up good totals even on flat tracks.

In their first match against debutant Rising Pune Supergiants, Mumbai Indians scored a paltry 121/8 after electing to bat at their home ground, the Wankhede Stadium, and suffered a humiliating 9 wicket loss.

Their batting lived up to their billing against the Kolkata Knight Riders when they chased down a huge 188 with Rohit Sharma leading the way with a sparkling 84 from 54 balls.

Against the Gujarat Lions, Mumbai's batting again struggled. They managed a modest 143/8, but the visitors sneaked home by three wickets off the last ball of the match.

MI managed 142/8 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, but it was way off the mark as David Warner's swashbuckling 90 from 59 balls saw the hosts win by 7 wickets with 15 balls to spare.

Ponting came down hard on his batsmen, saying they are yet to come up with a convincing performance, except against KKR.

"We have been disappointing so far. We haven't played to the level the team would have liked to play. We had a very good win in Kolkata when we were chasing a big score, but otherwise our batting hasn't been good enough yet."<./p>

"The guys have been very aware of the way I want them to play and they know they haven't played the way they can either."

"I think at different times we have been able to fight our way back in the games, but we haven't been able to dominate a game right from the outset," he said.

The former Australia captain applauded his bowlers and urged the batsmen to support them by putting up more runs on the board. "The bowling has been good enough, but we haven't made enough runs yet."

"Our bowling has been pretty good right through the tournament. (Tim) Southee was outstanding in the last match, (Mitchell) McClenaghan has been outstanding in few of the games and (Jasprit) Bumrah has been good. The bowling has been good enough, but we haven't made enough runs yet," he added.

Injuries have also played a part in Mumbai's poor start with their strike bowler Lasith Malinga unable to play any matches because of injury.

Equally disappointing has been the loss of West Indian opener Lendl Simmons, their most consistent batsmen in the last two seasons.

Kieron Pollard, who is making a comeback from injury, has not matched his lofty standards from past seasons.

"Things haven't gone according to plan for us so far. Lendl being ruled out of the tournament, he was our leading run scorer in the last two IPLs. Last season he formed a very good partnership with Parthiv Patel which we felt gave us a lot of momentum in the back half of the tournament and made the job of the middle order lot easier."

"Malinga, if he is not the best T20 bowler that there has ever been, he will be very, very, close to being that. Obviously, he is ruled out of the tournament and that is a big loss."

"Having Pollard coming into the tournament on the back of a knee reconstruction and having not played much cricket for the last 4, 5 months meant that he was probably a bit underdone at the start of the tournament," Ponting said.

One of the reasons for Mumbai's below-par showing with the bat could be attributed to their struggle to find a good batsman for the crucial No 3 position.

All-rounder Hardik Pandya was tried in the first three games, but he failed, managing just 20 runs.

"The problem we had with our line-up in the first couple of games was that with Rohit Sharma making the decision to go up and open the batting, we didn't have a specialist No 3 batsman in our side."

"Our internationals players Jos Buttler and Kieron Pollard that started, neither of those guys have batted at No 3. We wanted to have those guys in their more accustomed roles, what they play for their teams. Jos bats at No 5 for England and Kieron has batted at No 5 or 6 for MI all of his career, so we didn't have a specialist No 3."

Ambati Rayudu might have solved MI's No 3 puzzle following his 54 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Monday and could get a longer run at that slot, Ponting confirmed.

"Rayudu has also excelled when he has batted down the list for MI, when he has been in that No 6 role. He has been able to win games for us and forge a great partnership with Pollard and we didn't want to break that up."

"So the only real option we had was to give Hardik Pandya a chance at No 3. In domestic cricket, he bats up the order, he is a top order batsman, but I guess it is fair to say the experiment for No 3 didn't work for us there. And we promoted Rayudu to No 3 the other day when Rohit decided to bat at No 4 and Rayudu played really well in that game."

"It is probably likely now that Rayudu will stay at No 3 for the next few games," he said.

England's batting sensation Buttler, who was bought for a massive Rs 3.8 crore (Rs 38 million), has so far failed to live up to his billing. He played a crucial innings of 41 against KKR, but other than that has scores of 0, 16 and 11.

Ponting says he will persist with Butter and give him enough opportunities to replicate his recent good form for the Mumbai Indians.

"Buttler was out early in his first game, played a match-winning innings in his second game for us when we were chasing that total in Kolkata. He hit 41 off 20-odd balls, so that was a match winning innings."

"In the last two games, he has been a little bit unlucky. He was stumped down the leg side against Gujarat Lions and was then caught down the leg side off a terrible delivery last night. He hasn't had much luck."

"Look, we will stick with him because we know he is a match winning player and we have seen that right through the World T20 and even in the innings he played in Kolkata."

"He is well suited to the conditions, he is a very good striker of the ball and it is great to have him in the team. We will definitely stick with him for a while."

Ponting also made it clear that he is against making too many changes to the team despite the poor start.

"If you look back to the last half of the last season, when we were winning a number of games in a row, we did not change the combination much at all. The team remained pretty much the same."

"A lot of it has been forced as well with the way things did change for this tournament so far. Ideally as a coach and captain, you don't want to be making many changes. You want all your guys fit and available for selection. And when you pick them, hopefully the role that you give them to play, they can play that for you."

"But if they can't play that role, then you've got to look at other guys who can come in and play certain roles for you within the 11 players."

"We are not making excuses for anything that we have done, but we have not started well so far. We believe we have got a very good squad of players that are capable of making it through to the play-off games, but we are going to have to start playing better and we have to start doing it pretty quickly."