Mumbai Indians had to face a crushing defeat against Rajasthan Royals in the 14th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2024) held at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Monday. In this way, in the current tournament under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya, the team has scored a hat-trick of defeats. It was expected that Mumbai would return to winning ways in their first home match of the season. But Rajasthan defeated the home team badly and broke their dream.
In the match held on 1 April, Rajasthan won the toss and chose to bowl. According to this, Mumbai, who came to bat first, could score only 125 runs after losing 9 wickets in the stipulated 20 overs. After this, Rajasthan achieved the target by scoring 127 runs and losing only 4 wickets in 15.3 overs. Mumbai captain Hardik, who is constantly facing criticism from the fans, has given a big statement after this defeat. Hardik Pandya said that he is confident that his team will perform well and the team has a lot of confidence to come out of this difficult phase.
Additionally, he has urged his teammates to play with a more positive mindset in pressure situations. But he has not talked about his own responsibility or what mistake he is making. However, Hardik simply blamed himself for the batting failure and admitted that he got out in an attempt to accelerate the runs, hence the match slipped away from the hands of Mumbai Indians.
The outcome, sometimes, is not what you want. I don't think that surprises me much anymore. But as a team, we believe we can do much better things going forward and we just need to be more disciplined and show more courage.
After this statement, it seems that Hardik is blaming the entire team for the defeat. He has asked the team to play with more discipline. However, he did not find much fault with his captaincy and simply blamed himself for the batting failure. He said on this-
I think we would have scored 150 or 160 because we were in a good position, but I think my wicket changed the game and brought Rajasthan more into the match. I think I could have done better.
