Hardik Pandya of Mumbai Indians. (PHOTO: PTI)
After Mumbai Indians lost to the Delhi Capitals by 10 runs in an Indian Premier League encounter in April, MI captain Hardik Pandya had pointed fingers at top scorer Tilak Varma for lacking ‘match awareness.’
This moment was one of the incidents that didn’t go down too well in the Mumbai Indians dressing room, as per an article in The Indian Express. The report in The Indian Express stated that the senior members of Mumbai Indians questioned the team functioning under captain Hardik Pandya, who replaced Rohit Sharma.
Batting first, Delhi Capitals batters plundered the Mumbai bowlers, scoring 257 runs. Jake Fraser-McGurk blasted 84 while Tristan Stubbs (48*) and Shai Hope (41) also joined in on the act. While no Mumbai bowler was spared, Hardik himself was the costliest in terms of economy rate: conceding 41 runs off his two overs at an economy rate of 20.50.
In batting, Hardik almost made up for that, by scoring 46 runs. He was the second highest scored for Mumbai after Tilak, who scored 63 before he was run out.
Yet, Hardik was unimpressed by how Tilak had handled one portion of the game.
“(When) Axar was bowling to a left-hander (Tilak), the better option could have been to go after him,” Hardik said in his blunt assessment on the official broadcast after the game. “I think it was just a little game awareness that we missed out. At the end of the day, that cost us the game.”
The phase of the game that Hardik was talking about came when left-arm spinner Axar was bowling in the eighth over. MI were 72 for 3 at that stage. Axar only bowled two overs in the match. OF the 12 balls he bowled on the night, left-hand batter Tilak faced six balls. But on the first four balls of that contest, Tilak chose to pick just singles.
It must be noted that Tilak then hit a six and topped it off with a boundary to help Mumbai reach 115 for 3 at the ten-over mark. Axar was taken off after that, and never bowled for the rest of the night. Meanwhile, Tilak batted till the last over, getting run out while attempting a second run on the first ball of the final over.
Hardik went on to add. “The way the games are going and how the bowlers are under pressure throughout the competition, we backed ourselves to do it, the self-belief (was there). But if I have to pinpoint, a couple overs in the middle, we could’ve taken some extra chances,” said Hardik.
The Mumbai captain also praised Fraser-McGurk’s 27-ball 84 for Delhi, which he said displayed the “fearlessness of youth”.
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