Mumbai Indians vs Deccan Chargers Review

It totally sucks waking up at 5:30 in the morning and watching your team lose! Can't say I haven't had any practice, after having done that for most of the 90s. This was a game that Mumbai threw away. Only two matches in, and I am already finding faults with the team.

I can't be bothered to do a full review, so I'll stick to a couple of points from the game.

First, the bowling attack really did keep us in the game. Gibbs and Gilchrist started off looking as though they were in their prime, and there was nothing the bowlers could do to stop the run flow at that stage. However, they fought back (with a bit of luck along the way, courtesy Venugopal Rao running out Gibbs) brilliantly to keep what looked like 200+ at one stage to 168.

It is a bit ironic that the player Mumbai deemed surplus to requirements - Dwayne Smith - played such an important role in defeating us. He batted brilliantly, bowled well to keep the run rate down, and took that catch of Duminy. In short, everything that we normally expect Bravo to do, who looked a bit short of his best.

Tendulkar is clearly no fan of the strategy break, and he must have only deeper resentment for it, seeing as how the break totally killed the team's momentum. That said, the batting post Tendulkar's dismissal resembled a headless chicken running around the field. Granted, Ojha is difficult to get away, but the batsmen should really have targetted Venugopal Rao to maintain the run-rate. Letting him get away for only ten runs in his first two overs was just not on. An extra 5-10 runs in those two overs could well have been the difference between a win and a loss, considering we only lost by 12 runs.

Two games, two middle order failures. Tendulkar looked very good at the top, and as long as he was batting, there was no doubt Mumbai would win. Duminy played a good innings too, but surely, Dhawan and Bravo need to add that little bit more in terms of batting. Dhawan, in particular, looks a far cry from the player of last season. To be fair, the batting has not been an absolute failure, but when you have Bhajji coming in at five down, the batting looks a bit thin and you cannot afford to have a couple of players fail in the game. Hopefully, the team management is working on fixing this problem.

Bowling-wise, we had Zaheer, Malinga, Bhajji, Bravo, Jayasuriya and Kulkarni. With Nayar, Duminy and Tendulkar also capable of sending down an over or two, it looks like overkill. Much as I would love to see Kulkarni playing, it make more sense to shore up the batting by bringing in Saurabh Tiwary. In both games that Mumbai have played so far, the batting has been caught a bit short, while the designated fifth bowler (Raje/Kulkarni) has only bowled one over.

Alternately, it might be helpful to have someone in the middle order who can blitz away in the middle/late overs. I would play Graham Napier instead of Bravo for a couple of games to see if the idea works out. We'll lose Bravo, the bowler, but that will be an opportunity for Kulkarni to bowl his full quota. Plus, Napier himself is capable of bowling some spin.

Next game is against Kolkata, and going by current form, it should be an easy win for Mumbai. Kolkata's bowling has just not fired so far, and shouldn't cause too many problems for Mumbai, while Malinga, Zaheer and Bhajji should be able to cope with the threat of Gayle and McCullum.

Our next four games are Kolkata, Punjab, Kolkata (weird that we play Kolkata twice before we play Bangalore or Delhi even once!) and Bangalore. All emminently winnable, and a great chance to get some momentum going in to the tougher set of fixtures.