IPL 2022: Match 23, MI vs PBKS – Who Said What

Absolutely nothing changed for Mumbai Indians this time too as they bagged yet another defeat in the 23^rd match of IPL 2022 against Punjab Kings by 12 runs. Choosing to bowl first, MI let PBKS batters operate on the pitch first where the opening set comprising Shikhar Dhawan (70 off 50) and Mayank Agarwal (50 off 32) came up with flying colours.

The senior batting duo stitched a sturdy opening stand of 97 runs which propelled Punjab to post massive 198 runs on the board. Jitesh Sharma’s 30* off 15 remained essential towards the end to push the team’s score to a challenging one in Pune. While prime pacer Jasprit Bumrah conceded at 7.00, Basil Thampi picked two wickets to his credit.

Odean Smith picked four wickets for PBKS

The opening set of Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan failed to provide a promising start to the team as the skipper went off after adding 28 runs while the junior batter could only produce three runs. The onus was again on the middle order, where Dewald Brevis (49 off 25) smashing four straight sixes to Rahul Chahar did give some hope to the Blue Army, but even that couldn’t bring any luck for MI. It was Suryakumar Yadav (43 off 30) struggling alone yet again in the field after Tilak Varma departed and after Yadav’s dismissal, it was all curtains for MI. Odean Smith picked four wickets for PBKS.

Winning skipper and Player of the match, Mayank Agarwal said:

 It was a good night, very happy to contribute to the team’s win. The crucial thing for us was the two points. We can’t just say it was runs on the board, this game had a lot of ups and downs. There were a lot of crucial moments and more often than not, we were nailing and winning those moments. When the game was 50-50, we won those moments and it came towards us. It wasn’t batting alone, it was periods in the game. That’s the brand of cricket we want to play, we want to play aggressive, hard cricket. With that, we got to show good mindset. We were a lot smarter as well.

Losing skipper, Rohit Sharma said:

It’s hardly anything to find out (any negatives), thought we played well, came pretty close to closing the game, a couple of run-outs didn’t help our cause. At one time, we were cruising along, but didn’t hold our nerves, credit to PBKS for bowling well in the second half. We’re trying to play with a different thought process, but it’s not working out well. But I don’t want to take the credit out of the guys who played well and Punjab did so today. We aren’t playing good cricket, we need to understand some situations and execute according to it. They got off to a flier, put our bowlers under pressure, but the pitch was good to bat on and I thought 198 was chaseable. As I said earlier, we need to go back to the drawing room and come back better prepared.

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