New Delhi, India

Not many would have thought that the five-time winners Rohit Sharma-led Mumbai Indians (MI) would be struggling to open their account in IPL 2022 edition. After three games, the Mumbai Paltan are winless and occupy the penultimate spot in the overall standings.

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With two back-to-back defeats, MI faced Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in match 14 of the 15th edition on Wednesday evening (April 06), in a bid to open their account in their third fixture. Nonetheless, third-time lucky didn't prove to be the case for the MI line-up, who lost to the Shreyas Iyer-led unit by five wickets at the MCA Stadium, Pune.

Being asked to bat first, Rohit & Co. rode on Suryakumar Yadav's 36-ball 52, Tilak Verma's 38* and Kieron Pollard's 5-ball unbeaten 22 to post a competitive 161-4 in 20 overs. After a slow and sluggish start, they recovered in style but all efforts went in vain with Pat Cummins' stunning fireworks and Venkatesh Iyer's 50 not out in KKR's run-chase.

ALSO READ | Watch: How KKR's Pat Cummins trained at the nets ahead of his joint-fastest IPL fifty in MI tie

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While Iyer held one end with a calculative 50*, Cummins smashed the MI bowlers -- after joining the run-chase at 103 for 5 -- to close the match in the 16th over; slamming the joint-fastest IPL fifty (in 14 balls). He, thus, returned with a blazing 15-ball 56* to keep MI winless.

Thus, head coach Mahela Jayawardene has broken his silence on MI's indifferent start to the ongoing season. 

“I think we knew that they have a strategy where they bowl their spinners at the backend as well. So we needed to make sure that we had guys to take them on. Suryakumar Yadav was one of them. But initially it was a tough wicket. There was steep bounce, and there was little bit in it. We felt that we got stuck a little bit, and we were behind, and needed a par course," Jayawardene said at the post-match press conference.

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"That was the plan in the 13th over, and I thought with the couple of big overs at the end, we got that par score, and we were in the game for pretty much all the way. In the past few games we’ve not ruthless enough to close games off," he added.

Reflecting on MI's journey ahead after a tough start, Jayawardene further opined, "It’s always tough when you have a start like this, but we need to look at the positives. We’ve been playing some really good cricket, but we’re not closing games off. All three games we were in it, but we’re not able to finish it off. These are concerns, especially with the ball that we’re not executing at the back-end under pressure.. some of the execution has been poor. We need to brush up on that."

“It’s a long tournament, three games, yeah it is tough but we need to make sure that we get a win and get into those habits. Anything can happen with 10 teams. There are a lot of teams that’s gonna beat each other so we have to make sure we’re in it midway through the season," he concluded.