Beyond Jasprit Bumrah, MI have no support in bowling: Brian Lara on why five-time champions are favorites no more

Six games, four losses. Even for the perennially slow starters Mumbai Indians, IPL 2024 seems to be going off the rails. But contrary to their current state, the five-time champions had been looked at as a pedigree opponent ahead of the season.

Former SRH coach, Brian Lara has an assessment. “I think when we look at Mumbai Indians, a lot of people have them as favourites, simply because they were batting so well, they scored 230 runs, they chased on 196, made it look very easy, 15 overs, so on that fact I think, we pick them as favourites,” Lara told Star Sports.

But it’s their bowling department that has left MI playing catch up on most occasions. So much so that even the return of Jasprit Bumrah hasn’t helped things. “Their bowling is poor. Beyond Jasprit Bumrah, there is no one to actually support them in that bowling attack, and the CSK batters took them apart,” Lara believes.

Going into Sunday’s big-ticket contest, Bumrah had snapped 10 wickets from five games, which included a fifer against RCB. But as the pace spearhead went wicketless against CSK, the rest of MI’s bowlers bore the brunt of CSK’s batters.

Skipper Hardik Pandya leaked 43 off his three overs, included three maximums from MS Dhoni that helped Chennai cross the 200-run mark.

Another shortcoming that Lara noticed on comms was that “MI did not use their spinners after the eighth over as Shivam Dube, who has been impressive against the slow bowlers, was at the crease.”

Furthermore the former West Indies skipper noted the contrast at hand with the Chennai Super Kings. “What it tells me more about this game is that, if you’ve got a good bowling unit, like CSK, you look at their bowling, every single bowler played a part in that game, every single bowler. We had dot balls at the time, we thought that Mumbai Indians were supposed to accelerate, they didn’t.”

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For the defending champions, Matheesha Pathirana was the pick of the bowlers, as he nabbed four wickets and conceded to help the visitors inch by 20 runs.

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