Boucher on injury situation in Mumbai: ‘Stupid to open a can of worms now’

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By Webdesk


Chasing 234 cans on any surface can be daunting. On Friday, in a knockout, Mumbai Indians had to disrupt a set batting line-up by having a formidable middle-order batsman (Nehal Wadhera) open, making way for a concussion substitute (Vishnu Vinod) for Ishan Kishan, a of their big hitters (Cameron Green) go off on a hit to the elbow and yet hit with the kind of freedom that’s hard to achieve when you’ve lost two to nothing in the first three overs.

Mumbai’s head coach Mark Boucher found the turn of events at the start of their chase “disturbing” and they were unable to recover from the curveball thrown at them. Having just finished his first season as Mumbai’s coach, Boucher instead struck a conciliatory tone, not wanting to “open a can of worms” when the pain was still raw, instead hoping to make some “firm decisions”. take once the emotions were taken away. their defeat to the Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 2 in Ahmedabad.

One of the firm decisions he spoke of was to take stock of the injury situation in their bowling group and understand the “future of certain individuals from a fitness perspective” before charting the roadmap forward. For the record, the six 200-plus totals they got this season were the most of any team in a single edition of the IPL.

“If you lose two stars in bowling, you have a few holes,” said Boucher. “We tried to fix it as best we could, hopefully the guys can recover from their injuries. If they can’t, maybe we should look at other places. It sucks to open a can of worms now. It’s important to to sit back and think, get the emotions out and then make calm decisions once we understand the future of certain individuals in terms of where they are from a fitness perspective.”

“I feel sorry for the bowlers sometimes, if you go for scores over 200 it can take a bit of a toll on your confidence, which probably did for some of our bowlers.”

Mark Boucher

Boucher wasn’t so gloomy when he talked about their batting, even when asked if Rohit Sharma’s lack of form at the top was a hindrance. Boucher instead underlined how they viewed Rohit’s approach from a batter’s point of view and why it helped to bring about a significant shift. According to the record, Rohit made 332 runs in 16 innings with just two half-centuries at a batting rate of 132.80, but Boucher felt his contribution went much deeper.

“Rohit is a quality player. He led from the front in terms of driving the way we wanted to play,” said Boucher. “Our batting this season has been fantastic. We went out at the start of the season, looked at a few stats and felt we could improve in certain stages of the game, and the captain is the best person to go there and take it to attempt.” and drive that vision. If you look at how we did in the power play and from 7-10, we really increased the scoring percentage and played a positive brand of cricket that will serve us well in the future. The guys will take a lot of confidence from that.

“I think with the at bat Nehal was a great find, Tilak was a great find. They’ve had some influential innings all season. On paper and in terms of form our bat looks very strong. The guys are starting their roles within the team, so I’m very happy with the at bat.”

At the same time, he was unwilling to throw his bowling group under the bus. Instead, he highlighted the challenges they faced and why it wouldn’t do them justice to look at their struggles from the perspective of traditional runs and the economy.

“The bowlers, I think you have to look at it from a different perspective,” he explained. “If you look at the totals that were scored in Wankhede and chased then sometimes you can look at the numbers and say our bowlers went on to make a lot of runs. And yes, there were certain games where we did a little bit better. We have quite a inexperienced lineup for bowling But we had some good conversations and I think we got better as the competition progressed.

“But just to look at it because we went over 200, we were also chasing a lot of scores over 200. So anyone who comes to Wankhede knows it’s a very batting friendly pitch and ground. I feel sorry for the bowlers sometimes , going for scores over 200 can hurt your confidence a bit, which probably did a few of our bowlers. But we were chasing scores over 200. So you have to look at it in a different context.”

Reflecting on their campaign overall, Boucher called their playoff qualification a “great performance” while also reflecting on his journey. “The experience was fantastic; I really enjoyed it. (We have) a good group of guys in the dressing room, the support staff were great too, a lot of experience. It’s a very tough competition, takes a lot to win a cricket match win there’s a lot of good teams you play against so the results could go either way it’s quite a stressful competition but to say that to make the playoffs is a good achievement Obviously disappointed with the result of tonight, but I thought we fought to the end.”

Shashank Kishore is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo



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